Atatürk and the Turkish women's revolution as seen through Italian eyes

No Italians were present, in August 1925, in the conservative towns of Kastamonu and Inebolu in the Black Sea area where two important nutuklar were held. But the results of Atatürk's speeches can be illustrated by their descriptions of Turkish social life in the years to follow.
Whereas the Italians revolutionary and proto-feminist Cristina di Belgioioso had described Anatolian women with new interest in the wake of the 1848 revolts and Thomas Mann's son-in-law G.A. Borgese had given testimony of the dying Ottoman Empire more than 60 years later, important Italian travellers in the Turkish Republic didn't fail to notice the new position of women in Kemalist society. The writer and journalist Corrado Alvaro was much interested in Atatürk's new Turkey. For his postwar colleague Oriana Fallaci, Turkey had succeeded were many societies had failed in giving equal rights to women and became an important example of women's emancipation in an Islamic country. We hope to be able to confirm the value of the Kemalist approach of women as an important feminist achievement.