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Asena is the name of a she-wolf associated with a Göktürk ethnogenic myth "full of shamanic symbolism."
Contents
The Grey Wolf Legend
Legend tells of a young boy who survived a battle; a female wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. The 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, Ashina becomes their leader and establishes the Ashina clan, which ruled over the Göktürk and other Turkic nomadic empires.
These first Turks migrated to the Altai region, where they were known as expert blacksmiths, akin to the Scythians.
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 was resurgent. The symbol of Asena is embossed on the stage of the personal theater of the first President of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, at his residence in Ankara; the Atatürk referenced the motif in speech, such as that of February 13, 1931,Türk Ocağı, in Malatya.'