Bezgek Journal of Teaching Turkish Language to Foreigners

Abstract

The book titled Köroğlu Epic Among Iranian Turks was published by Ötüken Neşriyat in July 2023, deals with the narrations of the Köroğlu Epic by Iranian Turks, which is important in the Turkish world’s epic telling tradition as it is told in a wide geography and has many branches. The study is based on Fazıl Özdamar’s doctoral thesis titled A Study on Köroğlu’s Narrations of Iranian Turks, which he completed in 2019. Özdamar compiled his doctoral thesis into a book by reconsidering it and adding new data. Özdamar, who worked on Minstrelsy Tradition in Tabriz and Minstrel Ali of Tabriz in his master’s thesis; In this study, he focused on the minstrel tradition of Iranian Turks. He quoted the texts of eleven variants from the Köroğlu narratives in Iranian Turks and made a structural analysis of them through A. J. Greimes’s “actors and players” model. In addition, important and up-to-date information is given about the minstrels in Iran, the instruments they use, how they grew up in the tradition, and what difficulties they encountered in compiling these minstrels.
In the introduction, an attempt was made to evaluate the technical description, content, chapters and place of the book in the bibliography. The contribution of the study to the studies conducted in Turkey about Köroğlu, especially thesis studies, was evaluated. In addition, the methods and techniques used by Özdamar in compiling and transferring the texts are also explained. In summary, this study, which examines the Köroğlu narratives in Iranian Turks from many aspects, will be discussed and introduced in all its aspects.