An Important Resource For The Turkish Folk Culture Researches: Center for Information and Documentation of Folk Culture

Folk culture constitutes one of the life sources of a nation and shows the civil abilities if that nation in the world. For this reason, it is important to safeguard the folk culture heritage and to ensure that it is passed on to the next generations. The archives of folk culture plays one of the most important roles in this regard. That is to say, "The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage", to which Republic of Turkey became officially a party in 2008 in order to safeguard its intangible cultural heritage which is concerned with practice, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills-as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith-that communities, groups, and in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage has also highlighted and influenced the studies on this issue. The Convention, which exhibits a universal stance against the danger of extinction of the cultural diversity and richness through the social transition process that comes with the phenomena of urbanization, industrialization and globalization, has led the states that are party to the Convention to take some measures in order to ensure that the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is safeguarded and handed on to future generations. Thus, the Convention has brought up keeping the permanent record of the said cultural heritage as its primary goal and has prioritized the activities towards establishing "Documentation Centers" which will store the information, documents and materials pertaining to the ICH. The most competent and well equipped institution operating in Turkey for these purposes is Center for Information and Documentation of Folk Culture which continues its activities under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Directorate General for Research and Education. In this regard, another way to safeguard the cultural structure in Turkey together with all its richness and diversity is closely linked with this Center. In this context, this article has been written in order to introduce the Center for Information and Documentation of Folk Culture to the world of science and art, and to create awareness in the society on this matter as it is quite significant to pass on the elements of the Turkish folk culture to the current and next generations.