The prolific Ottoman author and encyclopaedist Ahmet Mithat Efendi was an important par-ticipant in late-nineteenth-century debates about how to modernize the Ottoman Empire. He repeatedly stressed the necessity of a synthesis incorporating the material and technical pro-gress of the West and the customs and moral values of the East. On the other hand, he strong-ly objected to following the West in the moral sphere on the grounds that it was in a state of moral degeneration and collapse. The present study will argue however that the Eastern-Western synthesis proposed by Ahmet Mithat actually did not only comprise the technology of the West and the morality of the East, but also incorporated certain moral values and atti-tudes of the West that arguably lay at the basis of its material progress. On the basis of a close reading of Ahmet Mithat’s novels and non-fictional works, the paper will first show that he acknowledged the existence of a “conservative” West with high moral standards alongside the “dissolute” West that he condemned so often, and found certain virtues of this West, which he found embodied in its achievements in the material and technical sphere, worthy of adoption. The paper will then proceed to reveal that Ahmet Mithat was also not against the adoption of certain Western manners like politeness or respect for privacy. Moreover he considered certain cultural products of the West like novels and plays as a useful means of improving the morals of his people. Finally, the paper will analyze a number of positively depicted characters in Ahmet Mithat’s novels who adopted certain moral traits and habits of the West that he found laudable. The findings will suggest that the author’s attitude to borrowing from the West was much more flexible and nuanced than the apparently rigid dichotomy “Western technology-Eastern morals” would suggest. Notwithstanding his sweeping condemnations of the West for its immorality, Ahmet Mithat Efendi was often careful enough to distinguish a “moral” West to be imitated from an “immoral” West to be shunned. He also showed himself in favor of the adoption of certain moral attitudes that underlay the technical and material progress of the West. This rendered his dichotomy “Western technology-Eastern morals” rather ambiguous, for when praising Western technology and material progress he was in fact also praising some of the perceived virtues of the West like industriousness and the spirit of research without openly admitting it.