The ashiklik tradition is one of the most significant oral expressive forms of Turkish folk culture and functions as a strong carrier of identity. In the ashiklik tradition, social values, belief patterns, and the transmission of cultural memory play a decisive role alongside individual creativity. The family is the cornerstone of this transmission and guides the formation of the ashik’s identity. The ashik’s artistic outlook, worldview, and value judgements are shaped by cultural heritage acquired within the family. The family is the primary institution in which language, beliefs, traditions, and moral attitudes are instilled, and it also constitutes a key space of socialisation. Accordingly, within the ashiklik tradition, the family is not merely a biological bond; it becomes an educational sphere where cultural identity is constructed and sustained. In ashik poetry, the figures of the mother, father, spouse, and child appear as constitutive elements of social unity. The mother’s compassion and sanctity, the father’s authority, the spouse’s beauty and fidelity, and the hopes and counsel concerning childrearing represent both individual and collective coherence in the ashik’s identity. Through these figures, the family functions as a bond ensuring continuity and as a cultural bridge across generations. Therefore, the concept of family in the ashiklik tradition should be approached as a structure that keeps tradition and identity transmission alive; its poetic representations clarify how folk cultural values intertwine with individual identity.

Ashiklik tradition, family, identity construction, cultural transmission, poetry analysis.