The importance and place of graywolf in Turkish culture

This study except introduction has four parts in which the meaning of graywolf for the Turks revealed. Graywolf which is one of the archaic component of Turkish Culture will be discussed in its geographical spread and continuous historical progress as a whole. In the introduction part gray wolf's motif development process and its analysis of cosmological basis in Turkish culture has been discussed like some dispute subjects whether gray wolf is a totem or not. First and second parts in which we tried to follow the leads of the gray wolf in historic sources we started our researches with oral documents like legends and epics and then continued especially with written sources. Besides archeological remains there were important findings in Turkish inscriptions and epitaphs, in other nations sources and in Turk-Islamic period studies. In the second part we tried to explain gray wolf's importance and place in old Turkish religion, public belief and Turkish social life with samples from various periods and geographies. It has seen that there are considerable amount of place, person and tribe names. In the last part we tried to prove with a lot of samples that according to the common sense which gray wolf mostly considered as a culture before Turks accepted Islam, shouldn't be seperated periodicly like this and you can see graywolf culture intensely in Seljukid and Ottoman Empire period. It was witnessed that at Turkish Republic's establishment and in Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's period graywolf motif was embroided by Atatürk personally as a mark of Turkish sense of manifestation again. Graywolf's progress after Atatürk in Turkey has been discussed as a separate title and the quality of the role of graywolf in old Turkish periods which provide us concrete datas from at least 3000 years ago and between 21.century Turkish culture displayed.