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Sözün Yolu

Oral heritage · Digital narrative archive

The stage isyour city.The word is yours.

A tale lives only as long as it is told. Sözün Yolu records the stories of Anatolia and the Turkic world together with their sources — then looks for the voices that will turn those records back into sound.

Explore the archiveBecome a storyteller
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Stories
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Recorded tellings
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Languages
2026
Starting in İzmir

What is Sözün Yolu?

Spoken words fly. We catch them first.

Sözün Yolu is not a festival page but a permanent digital culture archive. Every tale, legend, epic and folk story is recorded here with its source, its collector and its rights status. Then the same story lives again in the voices of people from different cities.

01Story
A single text recorded together with its source, its collector and its rights status. It has a permanent page and address in the archive.
02Telling
One recording of that story, by one person, in one city, at one moment. A story may have dozens of tellings; they all gather on the same page.
Dinleyicilerine hikâye anlatan Osmanlı meddahını gösteren gravür
Meddah story teller · Kamu malı
  1. 01

    Learn

    Free digital storytelling training

  2. 02

    Tell

    Choose a story, make it your own

  3. 03

    Record

    Film it on your own stage, in your city

  4. 04

    Share

    Submit it to the archive for review

  5. 05

    Keep alive

    It joins the story’s permanent page

Featured stories

One story, many voices

In this archive a story and a telling are two different things. Dozens of people may tell the same legend over the years; all of them gather on one page, beneath one source.

Browse the full archive

Two axes

Two axes

Explore your city

Every host city brings its own collection of stories, storytellers and recordings. The first stop is İzmir; the road continues to Antalya and Adana.

City collections

Two axes

Explore the Turkic world

Each city edition welcomes one guest culture. Its stories, storytellers and music live on in their own independent collection.

Guest cultures

Two geographies · One theme

The same story, in two languages

Two stories thousands of kilometres apart often say the same thing. The archive stages these encounters through shared themes.

Dinleyicilerine hikâye anlatan Osmanlı meddahını gösteren gravür

Nasreddin Hoca fıkra geleneği

The Hodja Ferments the Lake

They tell the Hodja that a lake cannot be turned to yoghurt. His answer is the sentence we all know: “But what if it does?”

4 voices
Dombrasıyla oturan Kazak müzisyenin arşiv fotoğrafı

Kazak halk masalları derlemesi

Aldar Köse’s Torn Coat

Walking unfrozen through midwinter in a coat full of holes, Aldar Köse persuades a rich bey to trade it for his own fox fur. The trickster of the steppe always teaches the same thing: wit keeps you warmer than wealth.

3 voices
Shared themeHumour

Become a storyteller

Eight steps to becoming a Culture and Story Envoy

The İzmir 2026 edition offers 250 free training places. Access to the training videos lasts one year.

Register for training

Storyteller Production Kit

Participants who commit to filming may apply for a production kit. There are 100 kits per city.

Apply for a production kit
  1. 01Register for training
  2. 02Complete the training
  3. 03Choose a story
  4. 04Prepare your telling
  5. 05Tell it in your city
  6. 06Record it
  7. 07Submit your video
  8. 08Become a Culture and Story Envoy

Recently added

The archive keeps growing

Browse the full archive