ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the implications of two notions, kut and töre (rooted in the earliest available Turkish texts), as the two pillars of the Turkish rhetorical tradition. The notions first appear in the eighth-century Orkhon inscriptions and figure strongly in Yusuf Has Hacib’s eleventh-century work, Kutadgu Bilig. Both the Orkhon inscriptions and Kutadgu Bilig, directly or indirectly, imply that kut is attained by following töre in all practices - including those that are rhetorical in nature.

Rather than defining rhetoric as the ability to recognize the available means of persuasion or the moral person speaking (e.g. the views that we observe in the works of Aristotle or Quintilian, respectively), Turkish texts such as the Orkhon inscriptions and Kutadgu Bilig treat rhetoric or the word (söz) as a means for attaining kut. The texts suggest that attaining kut requires subjecting the “tongue” (dil) to a certain rhetorical training (e.g. one has to study language so she or he can properly communicate with and utilize authority and power); this process is what ensures effective communication as well as one’s morality or proper following of töre. The rhetorical insights from these texts - illustrated in the translations of their various lines/verses interspersed with the discussion in this chapter - can provide scholars with various points for critical discussion on rhetorical agency and its moral boundaries, potentially offering new rhetorical models for civic uses of language.