Beliefs and practices on healing waters in Balıkesir

Water, which is one of the main elements of nature and life, is an indispensable asset for human life. People live in need of water from the moment they are born to the moment they die. Because water creates, produces, multiplies, heals, purifies, cleans and destroys with it. That's why people have shaped their lives according to water. The Turks, who established a connection between water and god, respected water and attributed sacredness to it, considering their need for water. This sacredness, on the other hand, has increased around healing waters, unlike normal water. In order to explain this sacredness, the Turks have realized a number of narratives, beliefs and practices that have developed around the waters. In this study, the narratives, beliefs and practices that develop around the healing waters in Balıkesir and at the same time provide the transfer of the Turks' perspectives on life, beliefs and cultures are discussed. The narratives, beliefs and practices that developed around the healing waters in Balıkesir were compiled by field research method, and the beliefs that developed around the healing waters were tried to be evaluated by adding the data in the written sources to the study. As a result of the data compiled during the field research and the examination of the data in written sources, it is seen that the ancient Turks still have the same beliefs and practices from the past to the present, some of them continue as they are, while others are combined with the practices of the Islamic religion and have evolved into an acceptable form by today's social structure. While it is possible to come across variants of many of the compiled narratives in Anatolian geography, almost the same beliefs and practices are encountered. This study is a study that compiles the narratives, beliefs and practices developed around the healing waters in Balıkesir with the field research method and evaluates them from different perspectives.