Hero's initiation process in the Siberian epics

Epics are not limited to the history of a single society but are essential elements that form the common cultural heritage of humanity by encompassing shared human experiences and universal themes. Through fundamental subjects such as heroism, love, justice, supernatural beings, and others, these texts contribute to the sharing of common values and worldviews among people. Epic poems facilitate the maintenance of a cultural connection by enabling intergenerational communication through the power of language. Simultaneously, they strengthen cultural continuity by bridging past teachings with contemporary societies, creating a link between them. Epics, as a verbal manifestation of the Turkish thought system, encompass the ways in which the Turkish nation interprets life and the attitudes and behaviors they exhibit in the face of life. These oral cultural products, transmitted from the past to the present, constitute a crucial part of humanity's cultural heritage. Despite their various manifestations, epics are known to have similar motifs and functioning. Focusing on the hero archetype, Joseph Campbell theorized the cyclicality of similar stories of heroes with the concept of "monomyth". Monomyth theory refers to the occurrence of the hero's "departure-İnitiation/ Maturation -return" stages in a cyclical and common flow in folk narratives. In this dissertation titled "Hero's Initiation Processes in Siberian Epics", it is aimed to evaluate the similarities of these texts in terms of common symbolism by applying the monomyth theory, the theoretical framework of which was determined by Joseph Cambell in his work translated into Turkish as "Kahramanın Sonsuz Yolculuğu [The Endless Journey of the Hero]", to the Turkish heroic epics of the Siberian Sahara. Keywords: Siberian Turkic Epics, Altai, Khakas, Tuva, Yakut(Sakha), Shor, Initiation