“Grey Wolf, Mustafa Kemal”: The Image of Ataturk in the Book of H.C. Armstrong

Abstract. The ideas about the leaders of states that develop beyond their borders are an important component of the image of the country as a whole and its culture. The
first President of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is no exception in this sense, and the book “Grey Wolf, Mustafa Kemal” by the former British military man
H.C. Armstrong is one of the first lifetime biographies of the founder of the Republic of Turkey. The portrait of the Turkish leader, created by the British author, makes it possible to trace the relations of both the country and its population and reveal the stereotypes that existed in the minds of British intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s. A study of his other book, “Turkey in Torment”, which is essentially Harold Armstrong’s memoirs of his stay in Turkey, largely explains the reasons for his negative attitude towards everything Turkish. It seems that the hardships during the captivity and stay in the Istanbul prison, the death and suffering of his colleagues, in many ways became the motive that served as a solid creation of the book about Ataturk. Discourse analysis of the text of “Grey Wolf” and works on the semantics of color (M. Pastoureau, E. Heller) and symbolism (J. Cirlot) made it possible to draw conclusions about the connection between the European perception of the image of Turks and Turks as gray wolves and inhabitants of the Asian steppe. In H.C. Armstrong’s book, Mustafa Kemal appears not as a national leader and “father of the people”, but as a bloodthirsty leader of a pack of wolves, and such qualities of an “animal character” as the desire to subjugate and suppress others, cruelty and cunning, were formed from the earliest years of life and reached its apogee during his time in power.

Keywords: British-Turkish relations, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the image of the “Other”, H.C. Armsrong.