The folkloric study of prays (Alkış) and curses (Kargış) in Gaziantep folk culture

Being an important commercial center and a transition zone, Gaziantep is also a place which keeps the vividness of Turkish oral cultural products. Among this cultural presence, prays and curses have an importan place. People express their positive or negative attitudes against life and their wishes and expectations through prays and curses including their Daily routines. Prays and curses are frequently used in every moment of daily life by every age of people. Prays and curses are also seen in electronical cultural environments as well as oral cultural ones. From this respect, prays and curses in Gaziantep are studied in a folkloric way in this study. In this study, the importance of prays and curses in Gaziantep folk culture is identified and besides their form-structure, content-topic features, creation-transmittinbg contexts are studied. As a result of the study, it is clearly seen that prays and curses in Gaziantep folk culture are important parts of Gaziantep city culture. Keywords: pray, curse, Gaziantep folk culture, oral tradition, content (context)