Turkish Stories

What is a Fairy Tale?

Defined in the Turkish Language Association Turkish Dictionary as "a literary genre that is generally created by the public, based on imagination, living in oral tradition, and describing extraordinary events experienced by mostly humans, animals, witches, demons, giants, fairies, etc.", fairy tales are an important cultural wealth of oral literature that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Fairy tales help develop the imagination, attention, memory, language skills and vocabulary of the listeners, as well as helping them gain reading and listening habits. It is also known that children who grow up with fairy tales are more curious and ask questions.

We the Atatürk Cultural Centre, an affiliated institution of the Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, protect Turkish Fairy Tales.
We have achieved a first in the history of Republic of Türkiye.

Our entire collection of fairy tales from the pre-Islamic period to the present day is presented to our people through a database with the technology required by the age. We are taking ownership of our own fairy tales with a comprehensive corpus study. We took an important step in this regard with the Turkish Fairy Tale Collection Project that we started approximately five years ago. With this project, known as TÜMAK in short and supported by our Presidency, we first started to compile fairy tales within Türkiye. The fairy tales collected from all over the country with the technological means required by the age were first examined by editors who are experts in the field, and then fairy tale texts with the characteristics of their genres were selected and written unity was ensured among them. Finally, the fairy tales were made accessible through www.masal.gov.tr with the approval of the Project Scientific Board, which consists of distinguished scientists in the field.

The most beautiful Turkish tales were selected from the texts compiled within the scope of TÜMAK using a scoring rubrik. Some of the selected tales were rewritten, illustrated, made into audiobooks and published under the supervision of an expert committee. Within the scope of the Selections from Turkish Tales for Children Project, 25 stories, completed in three stages, were distributed to children free of charge.

Our Application, "Stories of Türkiye"

We wanted to read our children and grandchildren to sleep and raise them with our own fairy tales. We offered our fairy tales to parents with the technological possibilities required by the age. Thanks to the mobile application we named "Stories of Türkiye", developed by our institution's IT experts, we grouped our fairy tales according to their provinces of origin and their types. We shared fairy tale texts for those who love reading fairy tales. We provided audiobook versions for each of our fairy tales for those who love listening to fairy tales. We prepared the opportunity for our fairy tales to be listened to not only in Istanbul Turkish but also in the dialect of the region they belong to for the first time in Türkiye. In this way, we tried to draw attention to fairy tale telling with local colors and keep the tradition alive.

We would like to thank our Esteemed President, Minister, our Supreme Council and Presidency Presidents, who have always supported the realization of this project and mobile application. On the other hand, we would like to thank the Project Implementation Committee, who have worked hard for five years in an insistent and consistent manner in the implementation of this project, all the personnel of our Institution and our scholarship holders.