An examination of Oghuz group Turkish tales according to the Holbek method

Folktales, which spread both nationally and internationally and are the oldest oral narrative genre of humanity, contain the customs, traditions, value judgments, philosophy of life, ways of living, traditions and customs of communities. Folk tales, which reveal the cultural identity of the people, contain deep meanings and are a living communication model that contributes to the transformation and development of human perception. This model reveals the strong ties between the past and the future and the worldview of the social stratum it dominates. It is extremely wrong to examine and analyse the fairy tale genre from a single aspect or to emphasize its various points. Folktales, which have intertwined implicit meanings, contain hidden meanings about the society to which they belong. Focusing on a single element in the fairy tale genre overshadows the hidden meaning. The messages given through the genders of folk tale heroes (male-female), their dual relationships, the roles assigned to women or men, the tasks undertaken, the difficulties and successes, and many other various opposing concepts (rich-poor, strong-frail, beautiful-ugly, old-young, naive-cunning) offer different perspectives to individuals. Danish folklorist Bengt Holbek is one of the researchers who has been working to reveal the meaning of these implicit messages. In his methodology for revealing the hidden language and meaning of folktales, Holbek aims to reconstruct the perspective of the traditional storyteller. With this aim, folk tale genres, which appeal to a wide imagination, reveal knotted structures while narrating private lives. Tales that are dramatized or kept close to the real world have been revalued on the ground of Holbek's actional interpretation. In this study, Holbek's method of actional interpretation, the bases of the method and the narrative techniques put forward with the method are given in detail and applied to Oghuz group Turkish tales. In this framework, tales belonging to Turkmen, Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Syrian Turkmen, Cyprus, Gagauz and Anatolian cultures were classified and published according to Holbek's scientific methods and procedures. The world views, creative aspects, mythic values, parodic approaches and perceptual differences of the Oghuz group of Turkic communities, which have a common linguistic background, were tried to be revealed through fairy tales. Thus, the rich cultural heritage of Oghuz communities and the intellectual, cultural and spatial relations in their tales were revealed. Thanks to this method, both the linguistic structures and social meanings of the tales were tried to be understood and a different interpretation framework was created.