ABSTRACT
Since the 1860s, two railroads have united the prominent port of Izmir with the fertile valleys of the Gediz and Menderes Rivers in what is now western Turkey. The construction and subsequent use of these rail lines introduced new groups of Europeans and Americans to western Anatolia and resulted in a constant interaction between newcomers and local people and landscape. Historical sources capture an extensive record of how yabancis perceived and conceptualized their surroundings. As a traditional symbol of progress, railroads are the poster child for ninteenth-century modernity. The unprecedented scale of the construction of two rail lines in western Anatolia drew the immediate attention of foreigners. A discussion of perceptions of the railroad construction through an orientalist perspective must eventually necessarily touch on camels. In their dual role as both the direct competitor in the economics of transportation and as a signifier of the exoticized orient, camels occupy a prominent position in the perceptions of non-simultaneity in western Anatolia.
