Özet:

The Italo-Turkish War took place between 1911 and 1912 in Tripoli, a remote province of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa. In the face of the war at a distant geography, the Ottoman society gradually began to lose interest in war. In this atmosphere, war propaganda comes into play. A tool of the Ottoman propaganda used during the Italo-Turkish War was literature. During this period, officer and poet Recep Vahyi published his booklet called Manzum Türkiye-İtalya Harbi [The Italo-Turkish War in Verse]. The work aimed at increasing the interest of the Ottoman home front to the war and instilling confidence in society as a product of propaganda literature. The work purely reflects Ottoman propaganda produced for the Italo-Turkish War. Propagation and counter-propaganda techniques and themes are used in the work. The adoption of a popular language and style reflects the aim of addressing different layers of Ottoman society. It is observed that the poet prefers a simple and fluent Turkish in order to reach Ottoman general public who speaks Turkish. The ironic style of the poet, his humor tone, swearing and slang discourse added to vulgar expressions are among the factors that make the work remarkable. As a matter of fact, the work, built on a popular rhetoric, appears to be a micro-level representation of the Ottoman war propaganda during the Italo-Turkish War period.

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