Folk beliefs of Silopi Region in its historical and cultural context

There are strong convictions that human beings have religious beliefs since the first human. People have received support from religion in making sense of and managing their environment, and thus religious values and rituals have emerged. It has controlled by religion as much as they have controlled the environment with religion, and a religious reflection has began to be seen in most behaviors. The features attributed to nature in the early times have came into existence as mythology culture over time. Although there have been thoughts that there is a transition from the mythological phase to the religious field, each myth continued to form the culture of religion. Thanks to the socialization feature of human beings, a data flow in the cultural field has been provided by transferring the thoughts and knowledge they have over generations. In this way, a phenomenon that is accepted as folk beliefs in terms of human history and related to the religious field has emerged. In this context, folk beliefs have continued to exist within the interpretation of each religion and have often been accepted as a part of religious knowledge. Thus, it has gained importance to understand folk beliefs as well as understanding religions. Since religion is not a phenomenon that can be dealt with alone, there is also a culture and history that guides every religious value. For this reason, the culture behind folk beliefs, which are based on faith and have a mythical meaning, should also be revealed in religious studies. So that, the discipline of folk beliefs, which developed in close relationship with the history of religions, emphasizes the reflection of religions in public life. In this study, Silopi folk beliefs have tried to be determined within the framework of religion, culture and history. Therefore, before moving on to the folk beliefs and practices of the region, which is the subject of the thesis, the relationship between folk beliefs and the history of religions disciplines has been revealed. It consists of three chapters, the first and two chapters containing the conceptual framework and the introduction of the research area. The third chapter includes the evaluation and interpretation of the folk beliefs and practices determined in the region. In this chapter, the transfer of folk beliefs at various stages of life and folk medicine, the plants used by the people with the intention of healing, and the perspectives of opinion leaders in the region on such folk beliefs are discussed. In this thesis, which was carried out with a qualitative study, participatory observation, interview and content analysis methods were used together with literature review.