A comparative evaluation of Oğuz Kağan Epic and Dede Korkut Stories in Turkish culture and history

Epics are oral and written documents that legendaryize the events that nations experienced in history, the difficulties they encountered, the ways they fought against these difficulties, the world view and ideals of the nations, and then convey them to the future in a unique style in the person of a hero. There are many elements and motifs in Turkish epics that can be examined on political, social, religious, cultural lives and science. In this study, a comparative evaluation was made by considering the characteristics of the heroes, social life and mythological elements in the Oghuz Khagan Epic, one of the oldest epics of the Turks, and the Dede Korkut Stories, which contain important elements of Turkish culture, belief structure and traditions. These two works, which have a very important place in Turkish culture and history, have a great role in transferring national consciousness to future generations because they contain many cultural motifs of the Turkish nation. The problem of the study is to make a comparative evaluation by comparing the similar and different aspects of the characteristics of the heroes, social life and mythological elements in the Oğuz Kağan Epic and Dede Korkut Stories. With this study, it is aimed to contribute to the literature by adding a different dimension to the previous studies on Oguz Kagan Epic and Dede Korkut Stories. In the study, document analysis, scanning, compilation and comparative history, which are included in the qualitative research method, were used. At the end of the study, when these two important works are evaluated by comparing the characteristics of the heroes, social life and mythological elements; It has been concluded that there are similar aspects between the two epics, that the same nation has preserved the cultural values that it lived at different times for many years and made it a tradition, that they are spoken orally and then written down and become epics, and that many cultural elements belonging to the Turkish nation still continue today.