This question of Turkish cultural power, who has it and the ways in which it impacts representations of Turkey in the world, has important ramifications for scholarly understanding of the relationship between national and world literature. This paper takes the literary prize as a case study to illustrate how rhetorical divisions in Turkey’s cultural sphere contain competing visions of the world through which Turkish literature circulates. This requires scholars to rethink the relationship between national and world literary spaces, in which success at the international level is proceeded by success at the national level, referred to as the “concentric circle” model of world literature. Turkish literature and its surrounding literary prize culture is a compelling focal point for this re-evaluation because of the ways in which the nation/world relationship is constructed and imagined by different cultural stakeholders: one which imagines the world as an alternative literary space to the national, and the other in which the national is the basis for constructing an alternative world. This paper examines two competing bodies of literary authority in Turkey. Turkey, like other nations worldwide, is going through a period of extreme political polarization that reflects long-standing divides in Turkish society over competing definitions of Turkishness that underpin national identity. Because literature has historically been a defining site of Turkish nationalism, literary production in Turkey is endued with extraordinary cultural and political importance. On one side of this divide, translated fiction by Turkish authors such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif ?afak has garnered near global acclaim through winning literary prizes. Their writing and the place it creates for Turkey in the canon of world literature can be understood as fulfilling the cultural promises of Kemalism’s Western, international orientation. This literature and the authors who write it take part in a global literary elite who value literature’s ability to cross borders, participate in the free press, and affirm liberal humanitarian values. These authors and their fiction are often read as Turkey’s ambassadors for world literature. Contrary to this cosmopolitan commitment, AKP government officials have increasingly promoted a different version of Turkish literary culture that emphasizes alternative histories, publishing networks, and crucially, competing literary values that directly reflect the ruling party’s political and social interests.