Adile Ayda

Adile Ayda was the first woman career diplomat of Turkey, but is today better remembered as an Etruscologist. She became interested in Etruscan studies while stationed in Rome as the Minister-Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy, did research on the subject during her stay in Italy and wrote down her findings in a number of books, in Turkish and in French. She proposed that the Etruscans were a Turkic-speaking people, a proposal which never enjoyed wide support and has since been discredited.