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who stated, “My girls are good and steady workers, and I can trust every single one of them. Every
year two million kilos of tobacco pass through their hands,” 28 adding “Americans came eleven years
ago—the Gary Tobacco company.” 29 Linke questioned him, “And the world‐crisis? Have you not
suffered from it here?” 30 Despite business picking up after 1934, WWII was on the way. When Linke
inquired of the workers’ salaries, the mayor informed her: “Well, most of them are on piecework and
make seventy‐five to eighty piastres a day. The Americans at Gary’s pay them approximately the
same.” 31 Writing of the working conditions, “They looked neat and business‐like, not so very different
from the girls I had once watched at Wills’ tobacco factory at Bristol.” 32
Linke also detected rivaling influences between Bolshevist, capitalist European (largely German)
and nascent American business enterprise in Turkey’s modernization. In Kars near the Russian border
everything was strictly “forbidden” while in Izmir busts of Atatürk and Lenin stood side by side. In
Izmir people had a “deep interest in European politics” but in Anatolia they were “chiefly concerned
with Turkish affairs.” 33 Factory foremen had been trained in Soviet Russia. Borrowing progressive
ideas and accepting financial support from the Soviets did not mean Turkey would turn Communist.
However, these aims appear somewhat contradictory when an official told her:
These men needed more than industrial instruction. They had also to be taught to
educate and lead their fellow‐workers without thinking themselves their bosses. [...] If we
take care from the outset not to create an exploited proletariat, if we make our workers
feel that this factory belongs to the state and, therefore, to themselves, and if we really
keep all the doors open to them to advance—why shouldn’t we succeed? 34
Linke probed both archaic and new forms of development that posed contradictions, affecting the
people’s psychology. More advanced than Europe in some cases, Turkey, a nation, a people, like her
impatient youth embraced change, whilst an older generation clung to habit. On the one hand, Linke
conceded a poor old man was “suddenly caught by the wheels of a mysterious machine,” 35 while on
the other, in speaking with an official, the vali also expressed his concerns:
The State—pah, they thought of it only as an institution set up to rob them. We have to
teach them now that the State is their friend, in fact that they are the State, and that the
State, at the same time, is something more—a unity of millions, a power, a strength. 36
In Adana, Linke met the director of a cotton factory, Mensucat Fabrikası. Invited to the director’s
home she commented, “...any better‐off English clerk in suburbia might live like this. There was
nowhere any sign of luxury.” 37 Whilst her autobiography might appear overly ideal, Linke was critical
only where necessary, in particular when she discovered young children working in the old part of a
factory owned by a multi‐millionaire in Tarsus. 38 Disappointed she wrote, “...the vali had not done his
duty [...] Not everyone is made of the stuff to attack the rich and powerful. [...] I must tell them at
Ankara. Impossible to imagine that they knew and condoned.” 39
Linke ascertained their desire to be portrayed in a positive light. Her experience revealed the
learned habit of Turks viewing Europeans as figures for emulation or “invidious comparison” 40 —a
Veblenian notion—referring to the coercive habit of comparing oneself to the class just above.
Veblen, however, also believed this same practice exists between nations as they are forced to
compete with one another. Yet, little did the Turks realize, Linke emulated their success and spirit of
insubordination. In the following passage that depicts a Turkish woman’s concern about how they are
perceived, Linke’s perceptive imagination wove the experience into an intuitive perception based on a
previous experience with a German cobbler’s similar concern. Thus her two experiences form a
rational synthesis.
I respected their motives, though I resented their attempts at making me only notice
the pleasant side of things. I remember, for instance, the woman at Samsun who quite
seriously said: “I hope you will only tell your friends of the nice experiences you had in