What is Mankurt? Who Invented Mankurt? How is Mankurt Made?

The unconscious slave mentioned in Turkish, Altai and Kyrgyz legends. The head of the person who is wanted to be turned into mankurt is shaved, wet camel skin is wrapped around his head and thus he is left under the sun with his hands tied. Camel skin stretches as it dries. The stretched skin clenches the head like a vise and causes incredible pain, causing him to lose his mind. Such a person becomes an unconscious slave who does whatever is asked of him without question.

He is a personality updated by using the Kyrgyz epics in Cengiz Aytmatov's work called Gün Olur Asra Bedel, written in 1980, and Orkun Uçar's Metal Storm 2 / Lost Naaş. Mankurt is a poor type of person who has become the puppet of his enemy, who has lost his identity as a result of some processes and deprived him of his identity.

While Aytmatov's work “The Day Happens Asra Bedel” was translated into many Western and Turkish languages ​​and became widespread, the concept of "mankurt" was accepted and entered the literature, and the themes of "mankurt" and "mankurtization" became widespread. "Mankurtism" has taken its place in the literature of social psychology as a term that meets the themes of "change of social identity and alienation from one's roots", with reference to Aytmatov's "The Day Happens Asra Bedel", which was shown as the "book of the year" by V. Lackhine in France.

One of the contemporary Soviet Kazakh poets, Muhtar Şahanov, while describing the birth of the Otrar poem on the theme of “The Defeated Victor or Genghis Khan's Aunt”, says the following: Every person must be firmly attached to the place of his birth. Without it, there would be no great writer. When rootless people appear, there is a state of "mankurtism."

How to make mankurt?

According to the information obtained from the ancient Turkish, Kazakh and Kyrgyz epics and Central Asian myths, "mankurt" was a very common torture and mind control method among the Central Asian peoples of the period.

When they want to make a person mankurt:

1. That person's head (hair) is thoroughly shaved,
2. The skin of the camel's neck is stretched well on the head,
3. Mankurt island with camel skin on his head was left in the hot desert for a few days under the sun.

Thus, the camel skin shrinks with the effect of heat and sticks to the head well. As the camel skin begins to integrate with the scalp, the scraped hair begins to grow again. However, the skin sticks to the head so much that the already hard camel skin hardens with the effect of the heat and the hair that grows cannot continue to pierce the skin and grow. For this reason, the hair starts to grow towards the inside of the head, not the outside of the body. Mankurt suffers greatly due to the pressure of the camel skin, which shrinks from the heat, on the skull, and the hair growing in the opposite direction inside the head pierces the skull and moves towards the brain. Mankurt, who cannot bear these pains, turns into a puppet after a while. He loses his memory, does not even recognize his parents. He becomes unable to exercise his mind and think. Therefore, it obeys whatever its owner says.

Today, the mankurt technique is a thing of the past due to the use of modern torture and mind control methods.