Lo sguardo turco sull’Italia fascista dalla penna di un editorialista di Stato: Falih Rıfkı Atay

The relationship between Fascism and the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish Republican People’s Party in the 1930s has been addressed by many scholarly works focusing on the early republican period. However, this essay attempts to adopt a different focus by addressing Falih Rıfkı Atay’s travel notes on Italy. Although Atay can hardly be considered a systematic thinker, he was one of the leading journalists strongly associated with the Turkish regime and Mustafa Kemal himself. His work Faşist Roma, Kemalist Tirana ve kaybolmuş Makedonya (Fascist Roma, Kemalist Tirana and the lost Macedonia) can thus be an useful source to understand the main themes which affected the perception of Fascist Italy by the broad Turkish public.