Turkish culture ranks among the world’s oldest and richest cultures. This culture, which has come down from our ancestors to the present day, continues to preserve its vitality at the present time. The Turkish Minstrelsy Tradition also constitutes an important part of this culture that changes by developing and develops by changing.

Minstrel literature makes up an important part of our cultural history. This literature, which emerged in the 16th century, is the name of our traditional literature, which consists of folk poets, known as “âşık” (ashik), playing and singing their own poems or those of master poets in the colloquial language and syllabic metre, accompanied by the saz (a kind of lute), or narrating folktales. 

Minstrel literature came into being with the merging of the “ozan-bakşı” literary tradition with post-Islamic Sufi thought and the Ottoman way of life and values. This literature, which first developed as religious-Sufist folk literature, later began to take the form of national Turkish literature in the area of Anatolia in the 16th century. Since its formation until the present day, many artists have been raised in this area, such as Âşık Şenlik, Narmanlı Sümmanî, Âşık Zülali, Posoflu Müdamî, and Âşık Şeref Taşlıova. One of the important regions that were a cradle to the minstrelsy tradition of the Anatolian area was the region of Northeastern Anatolia. One of the minstrels who grew up in this region was Âşık Şevki Halıcı.

Âşık Şevki Halıcı (1930-2015) was a storyteller who was born in 1930 in Çıldır. He compiled and narrated many folk tales. In this paper, an attempt is made to examine fifteen folktales compiled by Âşık Şevki Halıcı, in a study named “Folk Tales Compiled by Âşık Şevki Halıcı”. These folktales were collected and published by Prof. Dr. Fikret Türkmen and Prof. Dr. Mustafa Cemiloğlu. The stories reflect the Terekeme (or Karapapak) dialect, as Şevki Halıcı was a member of an immigrant family from the Caucasus. Both his circle of friends and Şevki Halıcı himself identify him as a Terekeme or Karapapak Turk.

The Turks known as the Karapapak or Terekeme live mostly in Turkey and Georgia (Borçalı). This Turkish clan lives in Ardahan province, principally in the Çıldır district, and in the Göle and Hanak districts and a number of villages of this province; in the centre of Kars and principally in its Susuz district, as well as in its Selim, Sarıkamış, Akyaka and Arpaçay districts and its villages; in the Kangal district of Sivas and its environs; and in Ağrı, Amasya, Sivas, Erzurum, Muş, Tokat and Yozgat.

The Karapapak/Terekeme dialect of Çıldır is included among the Eastern group of dialects in the classification of Turkish dialects of Turkey. In her work entitled “Anadolu Ağızlarının Sınıflandırılması” (Classification of Anatolian Dialects), Leyla Karahan separated the Turkish dialects of Turkey into three groups, namely Eastern, Western and Northeastern, based on the dialectal ingredients that she examined. She also evaluated each group within itself. In this classification, Karahan evaluated the Karapapak/Terekeme dialect under the seventh sub-heading of the second sub-group of the Eastern group, as “the dialect of the Kars Azeris and Terekeme”.

Âşık Şevki Halıcı, who was born and grew up in Çıldır and whose real name was Feyzullah Halıcı, became interested in the tradition of minstrelsy from an early age and was one of the self-educated minstrels (ashiks). Since as a narrator he was a Karapapak (Terekeme) Turk, he generally used the dialect of  Karapapak (Terekeme), one of the dialects of Azerbaijan Turkish, in his narratives.

When Âşık Şevki Halıcı used the words and idioms of the Terekeme dialect, he expressed different dialectal characteristics. In the verse sections of the tales, which were less subjected to change, and in the pieces with a formula-pattern characteristic, the text was mostly recited in the Karapapak (Terekeme) dialect. In the prose sections, however, the Karapapak (Terekeme) dialect largely changed into contemporary Turkey Turkish. Linguistically, a text emerges which has the differences between Turkey Turkish and Azerbaijan Turkish. When the text is examined, it is seen that a number of words are not used in standard Turkey Turkish. At the same time, many words not used in Azerbaijan Turkish figure in the narratives of Şevki Halıcı. Furthermore, in terms of both the morphology and phonology, characteristics of both dialects are sometimes seen in the texts.

This article has been written in order to evaluate the linguistic characteristics used by the narrator. 

Keywords: Folktales, Storyteller, Minstrelsy Tradition, Karapapak (Terekeme) dialect, Linguistic characteristics