The beliefs on the fire and fire place in Turkish culture

Keywords: belief, faith, religion, cult, fire, fireplace This thesis studies the place and importance of fire and fire place cults in Turkish culture and questions if these cults stil exist today. In the introduction part, a brief explanation on the theme, the concept and the method of the study is presented. The first part focuses on "the belief and "the concept of believing". Giving a description of "the concept of culf'.This section studies several cults in Turkish culture in general. The second part tries to shed light on the general beliefs about fire and fire-place in Turkish culture. Apart from that, the study involues several other aspects that dominate Turkish life style and culture such as birth- marriage- death celebrations sacrifying animals-libation- Nevrus-Hidrelles, folklore (public doctors, public veterinarians, public meteorology, games, horoscopes. This section also includes proverbs and idioms regarding the fire and fire place. In the conclusion part, the results obtained through the research are presented. In accient Turkish culture, the fire believed to clear all the evil and regarded as holy and protective is of great importance along with the fire place, Which symbolizes fertility and new generations. Having a general look at the Turkish belief system, it can be easily seen that most of these conceptions stil exist today, some of them remaining the same and others with change. IV