A cultural research of Dede Korkut legends and their availability in education

There are a lot of works which contain Turkish National culture constitutionally in Turkish Literature. Dede Korkut Legends are certainly one of those works that have the greatest importance.After the discovery of Dresden handwritings, the first and extensive copy of Dede Korkut Legends, in 19 th century, these legends were published in 1950 by Muallim Rifat for the first time.The majority of the studies on the those Legends can be defined as ? linguistic?. That point caused the forgottenness of Dede Korkut Legends? characteristic feature of being a cultural treasure or led to inadequte utilisation from these Legends? characteristic feature mentioned here. As a result of our observation, we realized this study to examine Dede Korkut Legends from a cultural point of view and to evaluate the feasibility of them in the field of education.The twelve legends that form Kitab-ı Dedem Korkut Alâ Lisan-ıTaife-i Oğuzan were read with particularity, the parts which were repeated periodically and are the cultural components were taken, the similar parts taken from different legends were connected, in this way the findings were accomplished.The research was made by using literary search technique. First of all, the concepts ?culture? and ?legend? were explained. Then the studies on Dede Korkut Legends were examined.The issues about how and to what extent can these texts, which have rich cultural elements, be utilised from in education of Turkish were discussed and evaluations were made.Key Words: culture, legend, cultural component, Dede Korkut, education of Turkish