The "child-bride" image in Turkish folk music

In the context of early marriages, child bride is one of the social problems that continue from the past to the present. Child bride is the result of the marriage of girls who do not/cannot show the necessary skills to get married yet and who are considered as children according to the laws of the society in which they are observed, as a result of various reasons. Its examples are not limited to Turkey, so it becomes a global problem in terms of being observed all over the world. Child marriages happen for a variety of reasons. Gender and gender roles are among the main causes of early marriage of girls. The roles of women in the patriarchal social order are limited to the household; due to their fertility characteristics, the roles of being a mother, being a wife, being a housewife are attributed to the woman. In this context, while early marriages are carried out in Turkey's patriarchal society, the roles of women are kept in the forefront and the rule of age is abolished. Girls are married regardless of their age as a result of gender roles, economic status and education level. Music, which is one of the cultural sources of society, contains the ideas, beliefs and values of the context in which it occurs. When music is evaluated within the context of the environment to which it belongs, it is important in terms of reflecting the cultural characteristics of the environment. In this context, the research addresses the problem of child bride through the songs obtained from TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire. The research was carried out in the light of the discourse analysis model. In the collection of data, within the framework of literature scanning and document analysis methods, folk songs and stories of folk songs with child bride figures were obtained from TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire. How the folk songs process the child bride figure and their musical characteristics (tone-rhythms) were determined by content analysis, categorized using the method of theme analysis in accordance with the verbal content they process and with the descriptive analysis method, the interpretation of the similarities and differences in the processing of the child bride figure in women's and men's songs is included through gender roles.