Cultural Elements in the Rituals of Traditional Sports among Turkic Peoples

Background: In this study, the material and spiritual culture elements in the rituals applied in the organizations where the traditional sports of the Turkic peoples are performed will be examined together with their archetypal codes. Each element of traditional sports materials and rituals has some symbolic meaning in religious and moral contexts. Aim: The main rituals to be examined in traditional games and sports are:the fields where the games held, calendar days, awards, music, category/weight classes (categories), master-apprentice relationships, clothing, top of the organizational hierarchy (wise man (el-yahshisi/elders, aqsaqal), those who announced racing horses, wrestling Alps to the audience, who chanted lyrical poems during the races, and who praise the wrestler before the competition (announcer [cazgir] eulogizer [Salavatci]), and dance performed according to music in wrestling (peshrev), etc. Methods: It will be tried to seek answers to the questions of whether the national characteristics of these rites were maintained today and what kind of transformation they have undergone. Descriptive research and comparison method, among the models included in the qualitative approach, was used in the study. The population of the research was limited to the Turkic peoples from Siberia to the Balkans. Results: With the effect of the inclusion of Turks in many belief systems in history and their contact with other societies for various reasons, as a matter of course, the style of the games and some rituals in the games have changed and transformed, and some have been forgotten. However, it was observed that most of the ritual practices continued instinctively. Conclusion: It was concluded that, although there were national and economic factors in the formal manners of the games, there was a religious aspect to the origin of these subjective or objective rites and these rites were inherently spiritual, and that most rites were, at least, as old as the recorded history.