Abstract:

Dede Korkut’s stories are considered some of the most important works of the Turkish language. These stories were first created by Dede Korkut as an oral narrative tradition and recorded in writing in the 15th century. Since the two copies of this text, by which we can learn about the concrete and abstract cultural assets of Turks, have been found—one in Dresden and one in the Vatican archives—numerous studies have been conducted in Turcology. The current research examines the character of Yigenek, The Son of Kazılık Koca, who has been mentioned 18 times in 3 of Dede Korkut stories, within the framework of Kohlberg’s theory of cognitive moral development. Kohlberg called his theoretical approach to morality and moral motivation “cognitive developmental” to describe his contextualization of moral development within social and non-social (physical) cognitive development. According to Kohlberg, moral values that develop continuously at pre-traditional, traditional, and post-traditional levels are divided into two phases at each level. The name Yigenek appears in 18 places throughout the work, including the story in which he is the main character. Because of this frequency, the Yigenek character was chosen as the subject of study because of the many specified emotions, thoughts, and actions from Kohlberg’s moral development theory.

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