The tradition of Turkish folk poerty and "Mahzunicilik" in the examples of Mahzuni Şerif

The position of the poem and the poet is important in Turkish Culture. Folk poets have a significant position in the culture of Turkish poesy because of characters both being nourished by the society and also feeding the society. Among these folk poets, Mahzuni Şerif is one of the most important figures of Turkish culture in the 20th century. Mahzuni Şerif, who lived between 1939 and 2002, wrote poems that reflects the cultural world of a certain group in the society and became cult in this cultural group. Within this context, the subjects of our study are the poesy of Mahzuni Şerif in the tradition of the Turkish folk poesy, his status and the socio-cultural situation of the group, who describes themselves as "Mahzunici". Understanding Mahzuni Şerif means comprehension of the cultural world of the alawite, bektashi, ataturkist and republican groups, specially in modern times. In this manner, the aim of this study is to analyze and evaluate the point of world view in the culture of Turkish poesy of a certain group and their attitudes agains modernism in terms of Mahzuni Şerif. In this study, which was done with the effort of understanding the tradition of Turkish folk poesy and Mahzuni Şerif taking place in this tradition, the historical and social backgroud of the folk poesy was studied first. The connection between the folk poets and the society was explained, it was informed on this subject by transferring the historical transformation of the poem and the poetic narration in Turkish culture. Subsequently, it was determined in which way of these types of folk poets being nourished from tradition nowadays, keep their existence. The folk poesy of Mahzuni Şerif and his remarks about folk poets were included. In the second section, the political and social developments of the period, in which Mahzuni Şerif lived, was explained and his life story was told by clarifying the cultural characteristics of this environment, where he grew up, were explained. In the third section, the poems of Mahzuni Şerif was analzyed in detail. For this, not only the albums in the written sources, but also all of his poems in the private audio recordings, which were recorded in the chat environment, were put in writing and they were assorted according to the method of İlhan Başgöz which is "the grading of poems in compliance with the last letter of rhymes". Afterward, the semantic world of Mahzun Şerif was explained by determining the most common words he used in this poems and vocabulary of his poems. In the last section, Alawism and changing politics in the society were reviewed in the example of Mahzunicis who consider and cultize him as ideal character. In this context, after it had been explained that Mahzuni Şerif is a political identity and a cult character, it was revealed, what kind of changes and transformations Alawism had been through in the modern times by indicating religious creeds and appliances of Alawism. Finally, the effects of Mahzuni Şerif as a folk poet on this change and transformation are identified and the cultural codes of "Mahzunicism", a cultural group, are explained. In the process of doing all this, the whole texts, articles, theses and books written about Mahzuni Şerif were read and searched, at the same time, all the documentaries on Mahzuni Şerif; the television and radio programs in which he participated; his own casettes, private audio recordings recorded in a chat environment were resolved. A field survey was developed based on the literature review. In the study, the field survey based approaches of the methods of mostly anthropological, folk-literature and folkloristics were used by adhering to emik-ethical values within the eclectic structure.