DREAMS IN TURKISH CULTURE AND FUNCTIONS IN BATTAL GAZI EPIC

Dreams are the daydream lines of a person which passes through the mind during the sleeping. The subject of dream, related with a lot of field like psychology, religion, phylosophy and history, they were handled by scientists which are majored in different disciplines and different describings were made. Dreams were subject which people interested in from the first centuries people interpreted them and they gave different meanings to dreams. In many cultures accepted that the events, which are lived in dreams, as obvious and real as the lifes being awaken. The dreams that are explained with traditional symbols are the public culture’s extentions. The symbols in dreams maybe the events that individual’s lived in person also they may carry the past’s prints, which are shaped with verbal telling. In this structure, dreams besides psychological dimension gain value as a sociable fact that include cultural value and symbols. Dream motif has an important place in Turkish mytology. In Turkish literature dreams were gained too much value before and after İslamic faith. Dreams have important place in Turkish literature, epics, myth, legends, folk tales and acyclic tradition. Dream motif is one of the most important motif which forms the structure in Turkish epics. Dreams have important roles in epic’s structure from the beginning of the events, to grow up and untill the completion. Dreams which are located in different parts of epics have different specialities according to contents of part. This dreams, suitable for the legends structure and appear as symbolic, increase the epic’s art value. In our works, first we emphasized the place of dream in Turkish culture and then, functions of dreams are examined in Battal Gazi Epic. In conclusion of the examination dream motif forms the important circles of events series, dreams which are seen, classed as rahmani dreams, and seen that they were accepted functions such as to herald, to scare, to warn and to report.