Bülent ARI

Hüseyin Kürşat TÜRKAN

Karacaoğlan, who is one of the most important representatives of 17th century minstrelsy, is an important information source of nomadic culture of southern Anatolia and Taurus highlands. Karacaoğlan was bound up with the geography where he lived and culture of this geography. That is why this nomadic cultural structure gave him opportunity to convey cultural background of the places he visited including Central Anatolia, Southeastern Anatolia, Euphrates Valley, Syria, Hama, Humus and Aleppo. When the poems of Karacaoğlan are skimmed, it can be seen that nomadic life style of which he was a member, the places he visited as a nomadic minstrel, social structure in which he grew up, relationship among people, shortly all material and nonmaterial elements were included. In brief, as Karacaoğlan was in a nomadic cultural structure we mentioned above and because of mobile minstrelsy tradition, theme of migration can be seen in a considerable amount of his poems. Our aim in this article is to determine the words about migration in this poems, and then to reveal what Karacaoğlan meant by the notion of migration in his poems by classifying his poems in which theme of migration was studied according to their topics.

Keywords: Karacaoğlan, Migration, Nomadic Life, Migration in Karacaoğlan‘s Poems