Travelers of the Turkish Republic: Looking at Europe through the eyes of Turkish intellectuals (1923-1960)

The efforts of the Turks to know Europe, which has been going on for centuries, reached its peak with the Republican period and Western institutions, habits and social order were tried to be adapted to the conditions of Turkey under the leadership of the state itself. With the trips made starting from the Imperial period to the Western states, which were taken as an example in military, political and financial terms, the countries and nations that were seen as the pole stars of modernization were observed on site and the methods in every field were tried to be understood. The effort to recognize the West, which gained momentum in the Republican period, can be characterized as a reverse orientalism, Occidentalism and the process of Turks discovering the West without the pretense of saving the Ottoman Empire. Travels, which are one of the important steps of the discovery process, and the travel books written during the journey provide clear examples in terms of understanding the image of the West in the minds of Turkish intellectuals. The question of how Turkish intellectuals observed and influenced the West through thirty-one different travelogues, which were found to be written during travels focusing on Germany, France, England and the United States between 1923 and 1960, is a remarkable subject in the history of Turkish thought.