The present paper aims to analyze in comparative perspective the writings of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969) and Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (1904-1983), two very prominent public intellectuals of two countries, central in the Middle East by the sake of their modern histories, encounters with Europe as well as complex experiences of modernization and nation-building. From these writings, it attempts to excavate how they have engaged with the notion of the West and, in doing so, simultaneously, in which ways have they also self-fashioned and positioned themselves vis-à-vis this ubiquitous notion. In this regard, the following texts remain at the focal stage of this inquiry; the published Persian original of Al-e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi (Westoxication) along with one of its most widely known English translations entitling Occidentosis: A Plague from the West by Robert Campbell and the published Turkish original of Kısakürek’s İdeolocya Örgüsü (The Weave of Ideologia). As its lay methodology, this paper employs source criticism in a comparative context. Complementarily, the ideas, tropes and concepts accommodated in these two texts are contrasted with the utilization of two thematical categories: the East-West dichotomy and history of the West. Hence, these two overarching categories serve to converge and juxtapose these different elements in a more systematic and practical fashion. Lastly, as far as their perceptions of the West are concerned, this paper reveals one glaring difference between these two intellectuals through its critical inquiry. Influenced by the Marxist understandings of capitalism, imperialism and coloniality, in Gharbzadegi Al-e Ahmad perceives the West as a geopolitical alliance, orchestrating a political and economic hegemony over other non-Western countries including his homeland Iran. On the other hand, while Kısakürek in his seminal piece İdeolocya Örgüsü also affirms the geopolitical disposition of the West, he elects to conceptualize this putative notion more as a community of values contrived by the civilizational legacies of Ancient Greece and Christianity. Based on these particular insights, it is eventually argued that this essential difference between the perceptions of these intellectuals is closely entangled with their homelands’ modern histories and peculiar encounters with Europe.