“WOMEN AND FAMILY LIFE” IN PROVERBS IN TURKEY TURKISH AND GAGAVUZ TURKISH

Proverbs, which are societal phrases expressed by communities by transferring centuries-old life experiences to certain patterns, provide important clues to the philosophy, cultural codes, beliefs, lifestyles, and systems of thought of these communities. These concise quotations, which represent “summaries” of societies, have an important place in the Turkish language. Proverbs are found in almost every source written in the Turkish language, starting from the Orhun inscriptions and reaching elimination. Even the proverbs in the earliest Turkish sources have been transferred from the ancient to the present day and are used daily in variants of the Turkish language. Gagavuz Turkish and Turkey Turkish, which belong to the same written language group of Turkic, are two languages with cultural and morphological similarities. The religious beliefs of the Gagavuz, who are referred to as the “Christian Turkish community” in the sources, and some of the experiences brought by their religions are separated, while many common characteristics of the Anatolian Turkish community are reflected in their lifestyle, traditions, and customs. Among these cultural elements, proverbs feed and develop from the same source. In this study, Gagavuz Turkish, one of the Oguz group’s written languages, and proverbs in Turkey Turkish are compared with regard to the subject of women and family. This study aims to include as many prominent proverbs as possible under the heading of “women and family life”. The proverbs in these two languages are compared semantically to examine the importance of the family in Turkish society, specifically the role of the man, the place of the child in the family and brotherhood, and the family proposition and progeny. The similarities or differences in the proverbs from the two language variants are described by providing examples that reveal the existence of women and family life in these communities.