Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison | Perin Gürel

E573 | Comparisons are everywhere in American discussions of Middle East politics. As our guest, Perin Gürel, argues in a new book, this cultural impulse has political roots in the Cold War period. In this episode, we explore the origins of comparitivism through the lens of America's evolving relationship with Turkey and Iran over the course of the 20th century, focusing on how gender and race shaped the terms of the assymetrical relations between the US and other countries in the region. We discuss the "daddy issues" reflected in comparisons between the founding figures of the Republic of Turkey and Iran's monarchy, the changing image of Iran's empress on the global stage, and the ambivalent claims to whiteness and anti-imperialism that took shape in both countries over the course of the Cold War. Throughout the conversation, we return to a critique of comparison as a placeholder for knowledge and a political instrument wielded with varying degrees of success to further American foreign policy goals, and we reflect on how this American project has shaped how all of us conceptualize the region's major social and political questions today. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/10/gurel.html Perin Gürel is an associate professor of American Studies and the director of Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She's the author of Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America's Wife, America's Concubine (Cambridge University Press, 2025); The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey (Columbia University Press, 2017); and the forthcoming ecofantasy novel, Laleh and the Language of the Birds (Wildling Press, 2026). Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. CREDITS Episode No. 573 Release Date: 31 October 2025 Recording Location: University of Virginia Sound production and music by Chris Gratien Bibliography and images courtesy of Perin Gürel available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/10/gurel.html