Language, in its most general definition, is a tool that enables communication between people. At the same time, language creates common feelings and thoughts among people. Thus, it saves people from being a mass and turns them into a nation. By ensuring the transfer of culture between generations, it connects the human community, which it has turned into a nation, to the past and offers a future design to nations. Therefore, language is the most important national identity-building value. The disappearance of a nation's language means the disappearance of that nation. The Altai Turks living in the Altai Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation in Southern Siberia are a Turkic tribe whose language and culture are in danger of extinction. For the Altai Turks, almost all of whom are bilingual in Altai Turkish and Russian, awareness of their mother tongue is the most important element that will save their language and culture from extinction. Although everyone has important duties in the protection and development of the mother tongue, the attitudes of poets and writers towards the mother tongue are also important. In addition to enriching the language by processing it, poets and writers can also be effective in the formation of language awareness in the public. In this context, this study deals with the mother tongue-themed poems of Lazar Kokishev, Boris Ukachin and Pasley Samik, who are important representatives of contemporary Altai literature. Through the poems on the theme of mother tongue, inferences are made about the attitudes of Altai Turks towards mother tongue and the importance of mother tongue is emphasized.

Contemporary Altai poetry, mother tongue, language consciousness.