The Alevis In Modern Turkey And The Diaspora

This book explores the struggles of a minority group - Alevis - for recognition and representation in Turkey and the diaspora. It examines how they mobilise against state practices and claim their rights, while at the same time negotiating how they define themselves. The authors offers a conceptual framework to study minorities by looking at both structural and agency-related factors in resisting state pressure and mobilising for their rights.

This volume, written by specialists, be they political scientists, historians or anthropologists, is a convenient handbook on the origins and history of Turkey's Alevis - an important group that is largely unknown in the West. It examined their ethnic identity, cultural representation, political life, and relations with the Turkish State, The Turkish Left and the Kurdish National Movement.

The Alevis are a significant minority in Turkey, and now also in the countries of Western Europe. Over the past century, many of them have migrated from rural enclaves on the Anatolian plateau to the great cities of Istanbul and Ankara, and from there to the countries of the European Union. This book asks who are they? How do they construct their identities – now and in the past; in Turkey and in Europe? A range of scholars, writing from sociological, historical, socio-psychological and political perspectives, present analysis and research that shows the Alevi communities grouping and regrouping, defining and redefining – sometimes as an ethnic minority, sometimes as religious groups, sometimes around a political philosophy - contingently responding to circumstances of the Turkish Republic’s political position and to the immigration policies of Western Europe. Contributors consider Alevi roots and cultural practices in their villages of origin; the changes in identity following the migration to the gecekondu shanty towns surrounding the cities of Turkey; the changes consequent on their second diaspora to Germany, the UK, Sweden and other European countries; and the implications of European citizenship for their identity. This collection offers a new and significant contribution to the study of migration and minorities in the wider European context.

This is the only volume dedicated to the Alevis available in English and based on sustained fieldwork in Turkey. The Alevis now have an increasingly high profile for those interested in the diverse cultures of contemporary Turkey, and in the role of Islam in the modern world. As a heterodox Islamic group, the Alevis have no established doctrine. This book reveals that as the Alevi move from rural to urban sites, they grow increasingly secular, and their religious life becomes more a guiding moral culture than a religious message to be followed literally. But the study shows that there is nothing inherently secular-proof within Islam, and that belief depends upon a range of contexts.

As a religious and cultural minority in Turkey, the Alevis have suffered a long history of persecution and discrimination. In the late 1980s they started a movement for the recognition of Alevi identity in both Germany and Turkey. Today, they constitute a significant segment of Germany's Turkish immigrant population. In a departure from the current debate on identity and diaspora, Sökefeld offers a rich account of the emergence and institutionalization of the Alevi movement in Germany, giving particular attention to its politics of recognition within Germany and in a transnational context. The book deftly combines empirical findings with innovative theoretical arguments and addresses current questions of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, and identity.

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.

In the rising momentum for new and reformulated cultural identities, the Turkish Alevi have also emerged on the scene, demanding due recognition. In this process a number of dramatic events have served as important milestones: the clashes between Sunni and Alevi in Kahramanmaras in 1979 and Corum in 1980, the incendiarism in Sivas in 1992, and the riots in Istanbul (Gaziosmanpasa) in 1995. Less evocative, but in the long run more significant, has been the rising interest in Alevi folklore and religious practices. Questions have also arisen as to what this branch of Islamic heterodoxy represents in terms of old and new identities. In this book, these questions are addressed by some of the most prominent scholars in the field.

Alevis have been struggling for the right of recognition and equal citizenship in Turkey for decades. Alevi media enables a particular form of transversal citizenship. Emre presents Alevia media for the first time, demonstrating the flourishing of ethno-religious imaginaries through community media.