Examination of Folk Beliefs in Yomra District According to Functional Theory

When looking at studies on folk beliefs in Turkey, we generally find two types of publications. The majority of research focus on revealing the origins of folk beliefs, which identified through fieldwork, in old Turkish religion and mythology, and establishing connections between the past and the present. The studies in the second group involve analyses of folk beliefs collected from one region of Turkey with those from other regions, or with folk beliefs from different regions of the Turkic world using a comparative method. There are scarcely any studies that address the functional dimension of folk beliefs and examine them from this perspective. The existing studies are quite narrow in scope. There is no study that extensively examines folk beliefs collected from a specific region according to the functional theory, as done in this study, which is one of the context-centered theories used by many researchers in the field of folklore. In this study, folk beliefs obtained through the field collection method from the district of Yomra, located in the Trabzon province of the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey, were analyzed according to functional theory. As a result of the examination conducted, it has been found that the folk beliefs in the region have eleven functions which are: helping to protect public health, assisting public veterinary, protecting from evil spirits and beings, ensuring abundance and prosperity and protecting from famine, bringing good luck and averting bad luck, predicting and directing natural phenomena, transferring intangible cultural heritage, helping to make prophecy, establishing a connection with sacred, reconciling the old and the new, and securing social unity. Thus, the folk beliefs of a region have been examined for the first time with a holistic approach, from a functional perspective, and a model is developed that can be applied to other regions as well as folk beliefs will remain

Epistemology · Communication Studies and Media · Cultural and Religious Practices in Indonesia · Multicultural Education and Local Wisdom · Philosophy · Psychology