Alevi Identity As a Response to Turkish Nationalism
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Columbia University Academic Commons The Nation Contested: Alevi Identity as a Response to Turkish Nationalism samuel watters, princeton university (2015) I. INTRODUCTION reverence for a figure so central to the Turkish state sense of anguish had replaced the exuberance struck me as a seeming contradiction. typical of the heart of the stanbul district Indeed, the Alevi population occupies a per- Be ikta . Streets that normally bustled with plexing place in modern Turkey. An estimated twenty Alively commotion sulked beneath banners,İ mourn- percent of the population, the Alevis comprise the ing martyrs,ş andş decrying complacency. The football second largest religious community in Turkey after matches and boisterous cheers that usually roared Sunni Muslims and one of its largest minorities, from nearby bars drowned under the cries of protes- alongside the Kurds.4 Despite the large proportion tors calling on the Turkish state to recognize and of the population that adheres to Alevism, the beliefs account for massacres that have occurred throughout and practices of the Sunni majority sharply diverge its history. Although the police officers surrounding from those of the Alevi population. Whereas Sunni this protest only observed silently, violent clashes practitioners pray separated by gender in mosques erupted between protestors and security forces else- led by imams trained by the state, Alevi men and where in the city.1 The protests across stanbul and women pray alongside one another in cemevis under the rest of Turkey on that hot July day commemo- the leadership of the dede (literally “grandfather”), rated the Sivas massacre, a 1993 incidentİ in which a figure determined by familial lineages of spiritual thirty-seven individuals—most of whom were Alevi authority.5 Beyond these forms of worship, Alevis re- intellectuals and artists—perished in a hotel set on vere a number of Shi’i and Sufi figures not recognized fire by a fundamentalist Sunni mob during an Alevi in Sunni Islam, such as Imam Ali and Hac Bekta cultural festival.2 Veli, and disregard many of the rituals and tradi- Only a short walk from this tense protest, how- tions held sacred by Sunni Muslims, such ası the dailyş ever, I encountered a strikingly different portrayal prayers and pilgrimage to Mecca.6 Alevis often attri- of relations between the Turkish state and the Alevi bute these differences to the emphasis Alevism places population. At the top of a steep hill in a nearby park on the allegorical and hidden dimensions of Islam, stood a nondescript building, its presence revealed rather than the legalistic and literal Sunni tradi- only by an occasional stream of people passing tion.7 As a result of these differences, the position of through its doors or a small group of children playing Alevism within Islam has proven controversial, with in its courtyard. Conversations with local residents some even contending that it is a separate religion.8 taught me that the modest building was a cemevi, a These religious divisions have inspired political house of worship and center of community organiz- tensions. As one of the largest groups to migrate from ing for Alevi communities. While its plain exterior Anatolia to the cities of western Turkey, Alevis have and lack of minarets distinguished the cemevi from grown increasingly visible in the country’s public and the grandiose mosques found across the city, it was political life in recent decades. This greater presence its interior that would truly impress upon me the gulf in Turkish society, coupled with the emergence of separating Alevism from the Sunni Islam observed the Alevi revival movement in the 1980s, has exacer- by the majority of the Turkish population and the bated historical tensions between the Alevi popula- complicated relationship between the Turkish state tion and the state that stretch back into the Ottoman and the Alevi population. Alongside portraits of the period as Alevis demand official recognition and religious figures Imam Ali and Hac Bekta Veli hung accommodation similar to those received by Sunni a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Islam.9 Due to increased pressure from the secular the Republic of Turkey.3 Having witnessedı ş the fiery opposition and the European Union in addition to protests on the anniversary of the Sivas massacre, this the Alevi revival movement itself, the Turkish state the nation contested: alevi identity as a response to turkish nationalism has haltingly sought rapprochement with the Alevi identity as a facet of the Turkish and Sunni identity population, first in 2007 with the “Alevi Opening,” a privileged by the state, or does it pursue resistance series of workshops initiated by the dominant Adalet and challenged the state as a minority whose dif- ve Kalkınma Partisi (“Justice and Development Party,” ferences must be respected? Simply put, do Alevis hereafter referred to as the “AKP”) that aimed to respond to their ambivalent position in the Turkish address Alevi grievances, but was ultimately con- nation as insiders or outsiders? demned as a failure.10 Despite such moves, discrimi- At first glance, it appears that the Alevi revival nation by the state and resistance by the Alevi popu- movement does both. Many symbols and narratives lation continue. employed by the movement locate Alevism within Scholars turn to Turkish nationalism in order an ethnic conceptualization of Turkish identity and to better understand the contradictory behavior of identify Alevi beliefs with civic values. At the same the state toward its Alevi population. Although the time, however, Alevis resist assimilation by empha- new state, built atop the ruins of the fallen Ottoman sizing the stark differences between Alevi beliefs and Empire, was declared a secular republic, scholars practices and those of the Sunni Islam supported by conclude that the nation designed by that state took the state.15 Yet these seemingly contradictory ap- on an ethnic and religious identity—specifically, a proaches do not reflect an ambivalent response. In Turkish and Sunni one. As such, scholar of citizen- fact, the movement asserts that Alevis are an inte- ship and identity in Turkey Ba ak nce notes that, al- gral component of the Turkish nation rather than a though Turkish nationalism “appear[s] to be defined minority outside of it.16 In doing so, Alevi leaders as political nationalism based uponş İ citizenship…in and institutions contest the meaning of the Turkish reality an ethno-cultural nationalism based upon race nation itself, arguing that the religious dimension of is promoted,”11 while scholar of Turkish nationalism the Turkish identity fostered by the state is an aberra- ener Aktürk argues that the modern Turkish nation tion from the legitimate Turkish nation liberated by is a continuation of the Muslim millet from the Otto- Atatürk. This true nation, the movement contends, is manŞ period, a legal Muslim community that imposed one grounded in Turkish culture and ethnicity, and a Hanefi interpretation of Sunni Islam on all Muslims shaped by civic values and secular principles. in the Empire.12 Recognizing Alevis as ethnic Turks As symbols are fundamental to the identity but religious outsiders allows the state to portray the formation processes of social movements, such as the Alevis as, Aykan Erdemir writes, a “noble savage,” the Alevi revival movement, in the first chapter, I seek bearer of a genuine Turkish cultural tradition who to analyze what a symbol is. I begin the chapter by is nonetheless mired in antiquated superstition.13 reviewing the relevant literature to arrive at a suit- Reflecting on these conflicting views of the Alevi able definition of symbols. With this understanding, population, Fethi Açikel and Kazim Ate describe I then examine how states use symbols to construct Alevis as “ambivalent citizens” subject to “constant national or majoritarian identities and how minority oscillation… between genuine selfness andş heretical groups excluded from those identities respond. This otherness… a symptom of lack of recognition, but at analysis leads me to three courses of action available the same time… a symptom of lack of total exclu- to responding minority groups: assimilation, exit, or sion.”14 But while scholars explore the attitude of the resistance.17 This assessment offers us frameworks to Turkish state toward the Alevi population at length, understand the processes of identity formation at the only a few examine the response of the Alevi revival levels of the Turkish state as it constructs a national movement to the nationalism that shapes identity identity and the Alevi revival movement as it re- politics and state policy in Turkey. sponds with an Alevi identity. In this article, I seek to address this gap in the In the second chapter, I build on this under- literature by analyzing the identity formation process standing of symbols and identity in an examination within the Alevi revival movement as a response to of the symbols and narratives available to the Alevi Turkish nation-building policies. To do so, I ad- revival movement by reviewing the historical devel- dress the following question: to achieve recognition opment of the Alevi population. I examine three pe- by Turkish state and society, does the Alevi revival riods of time: the Ottoman period during which the movement pursue assimilation and present Alevi heterodox sects that would later give rise to modern 93 columbia university journal of politics & society Alevism took shape in Anatolia; the early Republican modern Turkey. period, stretching from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War to the de- II. THEORIES AND SYMBOLS OF IDENTITY mocratization of Turkish politics in 1950; and the de- Scholar of nationalism Ernest Gellner once cades following democratization, a period marked by remarked that “one of the most important traits the resurgence of religion in public and political life of a modern society” is “cultural homogeneity, the and the ascent of identity-based movements, includ- capacity for context-free communication, the stan- ing the Alevi revival movement.