Le Role des Drogmans Dans la Formation de L'Image du Turc en Occident

Abstract

The study of the work written by the writer-travellers visiting Turkey in 19th and 20th centuries, shows nearly absence of a linguistic communication between the writer and the population of the visited country. Not knowing the Turkish language, the writers often used " dragomans" to inform themselves on die society, the habits, on the Turkish language itself. All that they knew of the Turks came to them from these dragomans. Broadly speaking, they believed and they wrote what the dragomans affirmed to them. The writers who did not question the validity of the accounts of the dragomans, remained unconsciously captive of their ideologies and their prejudices. And in this direction it would not be false to affirm-1 hat-the Turkish image, diffused in keys works, belongs more to die dragomans dian die writers themselves. Taking into account the fact diat die trade of dragoman is executed, in general, by Greeks or Armenians, i.e. by representatives of nations having carried out a war of independence against die Ottoman Empire, one can easily understand die role diat diese dragomans could have played in die formation of the anti-Turkish tendencies in die Western thought.