| Summary/Abstract |
Using US policy toward Turkey in the 1950s as a case study, this article argues that any discussion of the role of modernization discourse in US policy-making must begin by recognizing its malleability. Modernization as an ideology could, in the agile minds of American diplomats, serve to articulate and justify diverse, even contradictory policies. In the Turkish case policymakers invoked modernization to support, and oppose, democracy and dictatorship alike. Malleability also enabled modernization to simultaneously serve as policy and propaganda: At the same time the US government implemented programs that sought to modernize Turkey's military, economy, and even its population, the US Information Service, with the active cooperation of the Turkish government, quite consciously crafted propaganda to advertise America's modernity in order to win support for the US-Turkish alliance.
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