Europe’s image of the Semitic Orient emerged only as Ottoman power declined

Evidence

The idea of a Semitic Orient could only develop when Ottoman power was no longer supreme in the Arab world. The Turkish language is not Semitic, so it followed from the racial-linguistic assumptions of the time that the Turks were a different race from the Semitic-speaking Arabs and Jews. With Ottoman power beginning to fade, however, it was the Arab character of much of the Orient, and of the Islamic religion, that took hold of the Western imagination. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my interest in how imperial decline reshapes Western projection of ‘the Orient’ — parallels the shift from Ottoman to Arab imagery in later orientalism studies (Edward Said territory).
• QUESTION: The racial-linguistic assumptions that tied Turks to a different race than Arabs and Jews deserve unpacking — what exactly made Turkish ‘non-Semitic’ the determining fact?