Turkish kinship terminology does not correspond consistently to the structure of kinship roles. The situation is complicated by the use, in the villages, of the standard Turkish terms current in Istanbul, with only relatively minor variations of dialect and usage, although the two societies are very different.
I have listed in the accompanying chart (p. 52) the village terms, with the corresponding standard Turkish terms, translation and some comments. These lists are not strictly comparable, since the standard list is based on general, educated usage an on dictionaries, and not, like the village list, on observation.
Standard Turkish distinguishes parents and children by descriptive terms, (baba, anne, o§ul, kïz ); also parents' siblings by similar descriptive terms, father's brother (amca ), father's sister (hala ), mother's brother (dayï ), mother's sister (teyze ). Their children (cousins) are similarly distinguished. Siblings' children (nephews and nieces) are on the other hand all covered by a single term (vigen ). A single term each also covers grandfather, grandmother and grandchildren. Close affines are distinguished by a fairly full set of terms.
This system differs markedly from most Western European systems only in distinguishing between parents' siblings (uncles and aunts), parents' siblings' children (cousins), and different types of affines. It has no classificatory terms in the accepted sense, though some terms are used loosely - parents' friends may be classed as parents' siblings for the benefit of small children, for example. Kiz , the word for daughter, is also the normal word for girl. Agnates are not stressed, nor does the system in any way reflect a lineage structure. The distinction, for example, between parents' siblings seems now to correspond to nothing structural.