Signs of old Turkish beliefs in Kadirli and its surrounding folks

VI ABSTRACT Every society has encountered different tendencis within the historical processes. These tendencies sometimes stem from historical, geographical, political, sociological reasons and sometimes secondary commercial and interactional reasons. Even Turks showed these aspects, and adopted the beliefs resulting from meeting different cultures, regilions and political trends. This adaption sometimes happened superficially, and sometimes extensively. But, they never left the main aspects of belief yet they only were satisfied with slight motif changes. In this study it is aimed to mention the aspects of our belief and the related traditions, customs and ethics. Moreover, it also studies the regilious-mystical belief and culture relevant to birth, marriage and death. This study mainly concerns the time, reason and location of the beliefs, and cults in Kadirli and surroundings; and theii relation to ancient Turkish beliefs. The study views the reflections of these beliefs in Anatolia throughout a comparative method. The first section introduces the religions affecting Turk, the changes in these religions and the aspects Turks adopted from these religions. The effects of these beliefs on Central Asia, Anatolia and Kadirli region were explained with proofs. İn the secon section, the comparison between the origins of "Gök Tanrı" religion, adopted as ancient Turkish religion, and its reshaped from in Anatolia and Kadirli region was given. İn the third section, ceremonies like marriage, birth, naming, engagement, wedding and death were studied descriptively and analyzed scientifacilly relevant tc these descriptive studies. Finally, it was tried to map the beliefs in Kadirli and surroundings. The patterns on this map were studied periodically in paralel with the ancient Turkish belief map. İr this study, it was concuded that no matter which belief maps Turks belong to, th< changes in their cultural life had never been external but internal.