Turkish Symbols : Reflections of Hun Period Turkish Motifs and Symbols in Art and Life

• Author: Sazak, Gozde
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 electronic resource (252 p.)

One of the motifs of the study is the Kut-Alp Motif which concerns a pre-Islamic Turkish motif that describes the Kutlu Turkish Khan (Blessed Turkish ruler) and symbolizes all the Turkish khans throughout history. This motif is so coherent that it is as if a single soul came to the world at different times and was repeated over and over, taking control of the Turkish nation and saving it from extinction. Understanding Kut-Alp is to understand the deep meanings this work is attempting to penetrate. Indeed, the Kut-Alp motif is a brilliant mirror in which Turkish identity and the Turkish national spirit are fully manifested. Of course, this research is beneficial in shedding light on Turkish history, especially the period of the Huns. The work’s aim reveals that the Huns established a civilization in which the contemporary Turkish identity has flourished. In fact, this civilization sends us messages from the past through magnificent works of art. These messages’ correct interpretation becomes possible through decoding artworks’ motifs and symbols, and this study’s decoding element is cognitive psychology, which, through my formal education, became a beneficial tool for solving and interpreting the codes hidden in artworks, in service of Turkish history. When this research started, there existed no previous scale or categories for motifs and symbols, which include: böke, water of life, the kut power deal, wolf, tiger, stag, bull/camel, eagle, alp, and kut-alp (see Table 1 titled Hun Period Turkish Symbols and Motifs). After two years of painstaking and careful research and analysis, I created a ladder into the depths of meanings by classifying symbols under “kut-alp motif” categories. One of the most important foundations of this work was the Russian Federation’s State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the trip we made there with the BAP project (no. 21875) of the Rectorate. Our seven-day walk through the State Hermitage Museum’s long corridors resulted in approximately three thousand photographs of archaeological artifacts of Turkish art being recorded. In addition to this study’s physical achievements, the trip served as the gateway to our emotional world. Particularly when I entered the great hall in which the Pazyryk burials were exhibited, sensation was displaced, and the idea that these exhibits were more than simple artwork but actually carry messages from the depths of time engrained the hall forever in my mind. The desire to read and understand these messages became a passion. Extensive studies, various interpretations of art from various sources, and various philosophical approaches first led to the creation of categories by only visual implementation. Similar elements caught my attention, helping to form categories of repeated motifs: curved serpentine dragon/stag/eagle with horned heads, wings, two horns, the three-point or three-slice pattern, circular motions, pointed teeth, biting movements, fish scale ornaments, and curved motion tree branches. Simultaneously, I began an in-depth study of the Turkish epics, finding that their motifs and symbols were described through the various meanings of a composition. These epics and my gathered visuals allowed for me to begin to unravel their meanings. A unique analysis and presentation method emerged through finding and matching the visuals to the epics (see Table 3 titled Arrival, Analysis, and Presentation Method). But a third dimension was missing. I wanted to reach the mind structure of the society that created these epics and artworks so as to find their true meanings and to see their reflected faces. At this point, C.G. Jung’s Archetypes and Collective Subconscious Theory helped me in assembling and assigning meanings. In brief, first categorized visual images were made and then used to search for their repeated symbols and motifs within Turkish epics, matching the visuals together with written word. The key concepts developed from this interdisciplinary method are böke, kut-power exchange, and kut-alp concepts, through which we were able to uncover all other meanings of the motifs. To present this intricate analysis uniquely, we have reached what we call the “method of arrival from process to process” by developing the formula of “the curtain, the light behind the curtain, and the source of light behind the curtain.”