One of the sacred or ancestral settlements of the Mangystau (Mangyshlak) region of Western Kazakhstan is Mount Otpan. This place contains the oldest elements of Turkish culture and is considered an important destination for pilgrims and cultural treasures. Researchers need to pay attention to five cultural objects. The first of them is the «procession», as it is believed that the grave of Adai-Ata is located in it. The sacred tree near his mausoleum symbolizes the «Tree Cult». The stones placed around the tree are arranged in such a way as to resemble a mound, which indicates the «Stone Cult». The name of this place, «Otpan», probably means «Fire Cult». The last cultural object added after independence is a gray wolf statue depicting the «Wolf Cult». In this article, we would like to examine the meanings of these five cults in Turkish culture, the necessity of preserving them as cultural heritage, and their importance in the formation of national identity. The scientific novelty of the presented research lies in its integrated linguocultural interpretation of ancestor, tree, fire, stone, and wolf cults as an interconnected system of conceptual structures within the Turkic worldview. Unlike previous studies that have primarily described these cults from ethnographic or mythological perspectives, this work examines their linguistic representation through lexical-semantic, conceptual, and cognitive analysis. For the first time, the selected cults are analyzed as a unified conceptual network in which each concept (ancestor, tree, fire, stone, wolf) functions as a culturally encoded cognitive model embedded in language. The study demonstrates how these cult concepts are structured around semantic cores and peripheral associations, and how they are preserved, transformed, and reactivated in contemporary discourse.

EKICI M.

PhD, Professor, Ege university, Izmir, Turkey

E-mail: metin.ekici@ege.edu.tr, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9400-8462

ZHETESSOVA ZH.A.

PhD, K. Zhubanov Aktobe regional university, Aktobe, Kazakhstan

E-mail: zhanar_almasovna@mail.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7594-1695

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ancestor, tree, fire, stone, wolf, cult, Otpan