Golden Apple is a historical ideal that was put forward with the principle that national cultural elements should be revived within the framework of the idea of nationalism, which became widespread among Turkish states as well as all over the world at the beginning of the twentieth century. This ideal, which is the metaphorical discourse of the understanding of world domination that has been going on since the first Turkish states; It is fed by the universe of meaning arising from the connotation system of the words red and apple, and the desire to conquer every place where the light of the Sun, which is considered sacred since the belief in the sky god, reaches. Intellectuals and artists, who want to benefit from the moral and motivational power of the values in the collective memory in Turkish literature, especially in the national literature phase, point to the direction in which the modern era awakening should proceed by acting from the understandings of Turkish customs that have been shaped over thousands of years through Golden Apple. They shape their fictional works with the awareness of the active role of reviving the cultural essence in making the existence permanent and the reasons for the extinction threat faced by the state. In this study, who are among the most important names that enable the Turkish world to experience cognitive awareness Ziya Gökalp and Cengiz Aytmatov’s Golden Apple narratives will be compared and the similarities of their emphasis on the cultural code and their commonality in the perception of Golden Apple will be determined.

Golden Apple, Ziya Gokalp, Cengiz Aytmatov, national culture.