Bulgaristan Türklerinde Bir Fıkra Tipi: Çarıklı Filozof/Gerenli - A Joke Persona Among Bulgarian Turks: Philosopher With Sandals/Gerenli

Humor is one of the expression methods used by human beings. Throughout history, humor's sharp tang has been discomforting many people, and the administers in the first place. To represent society, jokes utilize some personas to express the emotions, ideas, and societal criticism that are not possible to set forth directly in words. Society approaches permissively to these personas manifesting the things that normally cannot be uttered forthrightly. Bulgarian Turks have “joke personas,” as well, one of which is the Philosopher with Sandals/Gerenli. 147 Narrations about Gerenli was posthumously compiled by MuharremTahsinof. In this context, by setting off from these narrations, the main aim of this article is to introduce Gerenli and make an overview of him as a joke persona in the folklore of Bulgarian Turks. The article also aims to show to what extends Gerenli can represent the views of his fellow countrymen. Gerenli's sharp tongue, the weight of his mocks, and characters of his jokes change depending on his addressees There is a distinct difference between his jokes against a landowner who looks down people on and plumes himself on his wealth and his jokes against his innocent wife or people who are on the same level as him. Gerenli uses a sharper tongue in narrations involving the chief of the village, landowner, tax collector, ranger, or those pointed by the society due to their negative character traits. And this helped Gerenli to become a prominent persona among society