South Korea has published the world's first Turkic humanitarian encyclopedia in 8 volumes
The Encyclopedia of Turkic Studies and Humanities is the result of a research project of the Institute of Turkic Countries of Eurasia at Dongduk Korean Women's University. According to its authors, the publication is the world's first encyclopedia that systematizes the key concepts of the humanities necessary for understanding Turkology.
Turkology is a comprehensive academic field that studies all areas of the humanities and social sciences, including the language, culture, society, politics and religion of the Turkic peoples, whose homeland and base is the Eurasian continent.
The regional coverage includes Central Asian countries such as Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as the republics of Altai, Tyva, Khakassia, Sakha, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan in the Russian Federation, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China.
The project "Creation of the database of the Turkic Humanitarian Encyclopedia" was won in the framework of the competition of projects to support basic research by the National Research Foundation of Korea in 2018. The work on it by a team of 21 researchers lasted for 5 years.
The encyclopedia is published as a paper book and in electronic form in PDF format and consists of 8 volumes and more than 4,000 pages, according to the South Korean newspaper Energy Economic.
The vast Turkic linguistic and cultural territory stretching from Russia to Central Asia and Turkey is a space associated with the nomadic culture of the Eurasian steppes and the Silk Road, and its geopolitical and geo-economic importance is growing.
In particular, it is important for Korea to strengthen humanitarian research in this region in order to identify linguistic and cultural relationships with the countries of the Turkic belt and expand consensus on mutual understanding, the newspaper notes. For this, according to the researchers, basic knowledge of Turkic culture is necessary not only for specialists, but also for the general public.
Accordingly, the Encyclopedia of Turkic Humanities is expected to fill this information gap and revitalize research in the field of Turkology, as well as provide key humanitarian information related to Turkic-speaking countries to both researchers and businesses, companies and citizens.
It is reported that access to the encyclopedia can be obtained from the Korean Naver digital platform, the website or blog of the Eurasian Turkic Research Institute of Dongduk Women's University.
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