This volume represents a first attempt at collaboration between Greek folklorists and their Turkish colleagues. The texts discuss the role of folkloric studies in the formation of national consciousness in the two countries, the way adjectives were used, traditional music for cultural homogenization, and the transformation of the many national groups of the Turkish Republic (1923) into a national Turkish state.
Other topics include the religious group of the Alevis as an indicator of the maturity of political conditions in modern Turkey, the study of music as a point of creative meeting of cultural borrowings, Karagöz as a fertile ground for studying common cultural elements in the Balkans, the search for memory of the Other in the narratives of Greek refugees after 1923, the representation of Muslims in literature, as well as the common narrative motifs in the fairy tales of Greeks and Turks.
The book constitutes another step, part of the efforts made in recent years, to approach and better understand the two peoples through the study and highlighting of all that unites us.
