Development of wrestling and the place of wrestling in social perception

This study aims to reveal the historical, social and political traces of wrestling and predict the future of this wrestling in our country. In the first part, it was emphasized the history of sports and the perception of sports as well as the historical examples. It was also studied which sports the Turks do and for what purposes they perform. The relationship between body and sport was included in the study in order to philosophically reveal the relationship between sports and the human body. Wrestling and human body were studied in this part. Afterwards, wrestling was discussed with its widest definition. History of wrestling and its relationship with civilizations and the geographies where wrestling was spread were studied. During the study, academic studies, historical documents and traces of archaeological findings were followed. It was revealed how wrestling took place in historical and literary texts. Anatolia's traditional wrestling types and due to its historical structure and cultural values, oil wrestling, which is included in the list of UNESCO as "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity", was also examined. In order to reveal the phases of wrestling in Turkey, the history of wrestling especially the dervish lodges, very influential in the organization of wrestling in the Ottoman period, was detailed. Based on the sense of place in the philosophical context, places of this sport and the history of wrestling venues in Anatolia especially in Istanbul were clearly specified. In the second part, where discussions about modern wrestling were made, sport perception in Turkey after the Republican Era were studied. Afterwards, the Republic's view of sports and wrestling were included in the study. The importance Atatürk gave to wrestling and his contributions to this branch were also discussed. Later, corporate organization of wrestling in Turkey and in the world and other meanings of this sport were described.In the third part, surveys were evaluated. Accordingly, the participants were generally interested in sports. Trend towards wrestling was detected through questionnaires. The group who went in for sports is included in the survey, revealing that they show tendency to wrestling. In the conclusion part, it was discussed the reasons for success in wrestling, the consequences of wrestling perceived as an ancestral sport, the reasons for defining wrestling as anti-modern sport and some suggestions on what to do to increase future success in wrestling. The analysis of these questions and to what extend the hypotheses were also confirmed were revealed in this part.