Özet:

In 1940, Italy's attempt to invade Greece received wide coverage in the Turkish press as well as in the world. In the process leading up to the Second World War, many attempts were made to protect the sovereignty of weaker and smaller countries, and the definitions of threat and friend were shaped in this direction by the Balkan countries. Turkish-Greek relations and Türkiye's perception of the developments in the Balkans have also been shaped by this framework. In this study, news and columns published by Tasvir-i Efkar newspaper about the Greek resistance were examined on the eve of the Second World War to present a reflection of the war in the Turkish press. Tasvir-i Efkar that could be defined as a conservative nationalist, was one of the most important representatives of the print media of the era and prominent names of the Turkish intellectual world had the opportunity to share their ideas regularly. Since the names that wrote articles in Tasvir-i Efkar were intellectuals who witnessed and contributed to both the last period of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic, their analysis of events shed light on the Turkish intellectuals’ definition of self and others. This generation of intellectuals of the last period of the Ottoman Empire had different concerns and priorities in the modernization and nationalization process. Hence, this article aims to examine which references about the past these columnists continued to use while evaluating current developments by publishing the Tasvir newspaper, and what kind of traces these references had on the boundaries and content of the important intellectual transformation that affected this generation. Keywords: Greek-Italian War, Turkish press, Tasvir-i Efkar, Turkish intellectuals, transformation