Asena

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title: "Asena" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["göktürks", "turkic-legendary-creatures", "wolves-in-folklore,-religion-and-mythology", "origin-myths", "turkish-nationalism"] description: "She-wolf in the Gokturk foundation myth" topic_path: "society/religion" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asena" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary She-wolf in the Gokturk foundation myth ::

::callout[type=note] Asena in Turkic mythology ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Proposed_national_emblem_of_Turkey_1925.svg" caption="coat of arms]] of [[Turkey]], bearing the wolf Asena"] ::

Asena is the name of a she-wolf associated with the Göktürks' foundation myth. According to the myth, the ancestress of the Göktürks was a she-wolf, mentioned, yet unnamed in two different "Wolf Tales". The legend of Asena tells of a young boy who survived a battle; a female wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. The she-wolf, impregnated by the boy, escapes her enemies by crossing the Western Sea to a cave near the Qocho mountains and a city of the Tocharians, giving birth to ten half-wolf, half-human boys. Of these, Yizhi Nishidu becomes their leader and establishes the Ashina clan, which ruled over the Göktürk and other Turkic nomadic empires.

In certain cultural narratives and mythological accounts, the character of Asena, with its symbolic association to a she-wolf, is denoted by the name "Bozkurt" (meaning "gray wolf" in Turkish), embodying a significant archetype with multifaceted connotations.

Modern era

With the rise of Turkish ethnic nationalism in the 1930s, the veneration of figures of Turkic Mythology, such as Bozkurt, Asena and Ergenekon resurged.

The Turkish Air Force's Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker tanker squadron is nicknamed Asena.

References

References

1. tr
2. Golden, Peter B. (August 2018). [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326609440_The_Ethnogonic_Tales_of_the_Turks "The Ethnogonic Tales of the Türks"] in ''The Medieval History Journal'', 21(2). 21 (2): 291–327
3. (2015). "Xin yi Yi Zhou shu". 三民書局.
4. Findley, Carter Vaughin. ''The Turks in World History''. Oxford University Press, 2005. {{ISBN. 0-19-517726-6. Page 38.
5. Roxburgh, D. J. (ed.) ''Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years''. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005. Page 20.
6. Koto, Koray. (2023-07-21). "Börü: The Wolf in Turkic Mythology".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::