Famine in our oral poetry tradition

Famine is one of the most important disasters threatening human life since ancient times. In the historical process, drought and thus famine events have been experienced due to several reasons in various parts of the world. Famine events had important socio-economic consequences such as migration, the emergence of some infectious diseases that resulted in death, excessive increases in food prices, black market, people's search for food in different ways to satisfy their hunger as well as public order and security problems. In our study, the famine disaster experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Anatolian geography along with its the social, administrative and economic dimensions were analysed through the poems of the minstrels who emerged among the people and grew up internalising the tradition. The poems of the folk poets we focus on, in order to seek answers to questions such as what the folk poets might have said in their poems about the famine disaster, were handled by considering the relationship between literature and history. Concentrating on whether the poems can be read as a source of history, the poems were examined from this perspective throughout the study. It has been tried to explain the effects of the famine disaster on the social life from the perspective of the minstrels. As a result, it has been seen that the poems of folk poets have richness in this respect.