Turkey's Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview [1 ed.] 9789004125384, 9004125388

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TURKEY’S ALEVI ENIGMA

SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND ASIA (S.E.P.S.M.E.A.) (Founding editor: C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze)

Editor REINHARD SCHULZE Advisory Board Dale Eickelman (Dartmouth College) Roger Owen (Harvard University) Judith Tucker (Georgetown University) Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

VOLUME 88

TURKEY’S ALEVI ENIGMA A Comprehensive Overview EDITED BY

PAUL J. WHITE AND JOOST JONGERDEN

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Turkey’s Alevi Enigma : A Comprehensive Overview / ed. by Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden -- Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2003 (Social economic and political studies of the Middle East and Asia; Vol. 88) ISBN 90-04-12538-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available.

ISSN 1385-3376 ISBN 90 04 12538 8 © Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

List of Contributors ....................................................................

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Joost Jongerden & Paul J. White Introduction ............................................................................

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PART ONE

ALEVIS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH Hamit Bozarslan Alevism and the Myths of Research: The Need for a New Research Agenda ..........................................................

3

Paul J. White The Debate on the Identity of ‘Alevi Kurds’ ....................

17

PART TWO

HISTORY OF ALEVIS IN TURKEY David Shankland Social Change and Culture: Responses to Modernization in an Alevi Village in Anatolia ............................................

33

PART THREE

ALEVIS AND THE STATE Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi Atatürk and the Alevis: A Holy Alliance? ..........................

53

Joost Jongerden Violation of Human Rights and the Alevis in Turkey ......

71

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contents PART FOUR

ALEVI RENAISSANCE Karin Vorhoff The Past in the Future: Discourses on the Alevis in Contemporary Turkey ..........................................................

93

Leyla Neyzi Zazaname: The Alevi Renaissance, Media and Music in the Nineties ........................................................................ 111 Elise Massicard Alevism as a Productive Misunderstanding: the Hacıbekta{ Festival .................................................................................... 125 Ay{e Betül Çelik Alevis, Kurds and Hem{ehris: Alevi Kurdish Revival in the Nineties ........................................................................ 141 Isabelle Rigoni Alevis in Europe: A Narrow Path towards Visibility ........ 159 PART FIVE

ALEVIS AND THE KURDISH MOVEMENT Hans-Lukas Kieser Alevis, Armenians and Kurds in Unionist-Kemalist Turkey (1908–1938) .............................................................. 177 Michiel Leezenberg Kurdish Alevis and the Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990 ............................................................................ 197 PART SIX

ALEVIS AND THE TURKISH LEFT Emma Sinclair-Webb Sectarian Violence, the Alevi Minority and the Left: Kahramanmara{ 1978 ............................................................ 215 Index of Keywords .................................................................... 237 Index of Persons ........................................................................ 241

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Hamit Bozarslan wrote his Master’s dissertation on the history of ideas in the Ottoman Empire. His doctoral thesis was on the Kurdish national movement. He has worked at the Centre Marc-Bloch at the Freie Universität Berlin and currently researches and lectures on Kurdish Politics and History at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences in Paris. He is the author of La Question Kurde: Etats et minorités au MoyenOrient (Presses de SCPO, 1997) and numerous other scholarly texts. Joost Jongerden graduated as a sociologist at Wageningen University. He worked as a Turkey specialist at the Dutch section of Amnesty International. He is doing his PhD at the Chair Technology and Agrarian Development, Department Social Sciences, Wageningen University, and the Department of Oriental Studies, Utrecht University. His thesis is about settlement and rural development in Southeast Turkey. He has written several scholarly articles on settlement and re-settlement in Southeast Turkey, among others in Kurdische Studien and The Global Review of Ethnopolitics. Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi obtained her doctorate in Ethnology in 1986 at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Bremen. She has written a monograph and several scholarly articles on Alevism (in the German language). Hans-Lukas Kieser works for the Swiss National Science Foundation at Zurich University, teaching modern Near Eastern history. He specializes in post-Ottoman and late Ottoman history. Among his recent publications are the book Der verpasste Friede. Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Türkei, 1839–1938 (2000 Chronos, Zürich) and articles in refereed journals on Kurdish and Armenian politics. Michiel Leezenberg has a doctorate in Linguistics. He teaches in the faculty of humanities at the University of Amsterdam. Earlier, he held a post in the Department of Oriental Languages in the University of Utrecht. He is the author of numerous articles on the

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politics and society of the Kurds and has just published a book on the history of Islamic philosophy. Leyla Neyzi is an Anthropologist on the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University in Istanbul. Her publications in Turkish include a book on oral history. Her work on the Alevi includes ‘Gülümser’s Story: Life History Narratives, Memory and Belonging in Turkey,’ New Perspectives on Turkey 20 (Spring 1999): 1–27. Elise Massicard graduated in Political Science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques Paris and Freie Universität Berlin and in Turcology from the Institut Nartional des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO). After having researched on the mahalla institution in Uzbekistan, she is currently working on her PhD thesis on Alevism as a political identity in contemporary Turkey, especially focussing on its sociological and discursive dimensions. She is working as a research fellow on ‘Transplanted Islam and Migrations’ at the FrancoGerman Research Centre for Social Sciences, Berlin. Ay{e Betül Çelik earned her PhD in political science from Binghamton University in 2002. Her thesis is about Kurdish associations in Istanbul. She has published several scholarly articles on Kurdish migration, mobilization and associations. She is currently an assistant professor in the Conflict Analysis and Resolution programme in Sabancı University, Istanbul. Isabelle Rigoni is an EU Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER), University of Warwick, UK. She is the author of several texts on Turkish politics and society, the most recent of which are “Les médias des migrants de Turquie en Europe” in Isabelle Rigoni et Reynald Blion (Eds.), D’un voyage à l’autre. Des voix de l’immigration pour un développement pluriel (2001, Paris, Karthala, Institut Panos) and “Das Alewitentum in Frankreich” in (smail Engin, Erhard Franz Aleviler/Alewiten, (2001, Hamburg, Deutsches Orient-Institut). David Shankland is a Social Anthropologist who specializes in modern Turkey, looking in particular at its rural societies, including the Alevis. He conducted fieldwork among the Berbers of the High Atlas Mountains for his MA fieldwork, before moving to Cambridge to

list of contributors

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study modern Turkey with the late Professor Gellner. His doctoral fieldwork, conducted between 1988 and 1990, centred on Anatolia’s Alevis. He is shortly to have a monograph Islam and Society in Modern Turkey published by the Eothen Press. He is currently the Acting Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. He was elected an honorary research fellow of the Middle East Studies Centre at SOAS in 1994, returning to Britain in 1995 to lecture in Anthropology at the University of Wales, Lampeter. In 1997 he was elected the Recorder of the Archaeology and Anthropology Section (H) of the British Association of the Advancement of Science. Emma Sinclair-Webb is currently completing her doctorate in the Department of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College at the University of London. She is the author of articles on Islam, folklore and Alevi community in Turkey. Karin Vorhoff is an Anthropologist who studied Cultural Anthropology, History and Culture of the Near East/Turkology, Social and Economic History at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, from which she received her MA with a thesis on the current revival of Alevism in Turkey. She has worked at the Istanbul branch of the Orient Institut der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft in various projects, including migration, urbanization and cultural identity and been an associate researcher and editor in a project on Civil Society, Nationalism and the Integration to Europe of Turkey at the Institut. She now works as an expert at the German Caritas Association in Freiburg. Paul J. White in a Political Scientist who works as the Research Officer of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. He also teaches International Relations of the Middle East at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (2000, Zed Books, London) and co-editor of the book Remaking the Middle East (1997, Berg Publishers, Oxford & New York). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Arabic, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies and serves on the board of directors of the Kurdish Institute, in Washington.

INTRODUCTION

The Alevis of Turkey present many conundrums to Western observers. Who exactly are they? What constitutes their social identity—ethnic, religious, cultural or political factors? How did these develop over time? What are their historical relations with the Kurdish national movement or with the Kemalist political elite? This volume attempts to comprehensively address the ‘Alevi issue’, while discussing the social and political formation of modern Turkey. As the authors make clear, this question, together with the ‘Kurdish issue’, is one of the most explosive issues in contemporary Turkey, which leaves no aspect of life unaffected. Nevertheless existing books on the Alevis in Turkey in any European language are scarce, let alone in English, dealing mainly with religious matters and, to a lesser extent, with political and ethnic questions. This book covers the ‘Alevi question’ from all its aspects and seeks to contribute significantly towards constructing a coherent picture. In the book’s first part, Hamit Bozarslan and Paul J. White discuss the social research agenda. In his essay, Hamit Bozarslan unravels three myths of research on the Alevi in Turkey. The first of these is what he calls the ‘long-term history’ myth that invented Alevism as an eternal social category featuring a constant opposition to the state. The second one is the myth of the ‘Kemalist discontinuity’. This is the myth of Alevism as a natural ally of the Kemalist Republic. The third myth is that of the democratic culture of Alevis, as if there is an unshakeable link between Alevism and democracy. Finally, Bozarslan underlines the necessity of a sociological revaluation of Alevism. In his contribution, White debates the identity of Alevi Kurds as one example of the difficulty scholars have in discussing the concept of identity and the processes of ethnic differentiation. He deconstructs the myth of Alevism as a single undifferentiated identity and sketches the multiple identities of Alevis in general and Alevi Kurds in particular. He shows that the debate on the identity of the Alevis is not just of scholarly importance, but an issue of fierce political debate and struggle among Alevis themselves and between the Alevis, the Turkish state and the Kurdish national movement.

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In part two, David Shankland examines responses to modernization in an Anatolian Alevi village. Shankland’s investigation reveals variegated patterns of ongoing change in contemporary Alevi communities. He also shows differences in social structures in Alevi villages from Sunni villages. Shankland stresses, however, that the dynamic processes in Alevi villages are still evolving with great speed. Finally, Shankland argues for further fieldwork in Alevi villages, so that ‘reasoned, properly contextualized evaluations of the Alevi “revival”’ can be undertaken. In part three of the book, Kriztina Kehl-Bodrogi and Joost Jongerden discuss relations between the state and the Alevis. In ‘Atatürk and the Alevis: a Holy Alliance’ Kriztina Kehl-Bodrogi discusses the historical and political developments that made Atatürk appear to the Alevis as a liberator, but also the voices critical of that attitude. Joost Jongerden elaborates on the issue of legal discrimination and organized violence in the 1980s and 1990s against the Alevis in Turkey. He argues that the history of modern Turkey has been dominated by the attempts of the political and military elite to create social cohesion by the invention and re-invention of a Turkish national identity and the imposition of this particular identity on its citizens. He discusses some historical characteristics of identity politics in Turkey— in particular the development of a Turkish ethnie and the discourse and political influence of the Türk-(slam Sentezi. He also examines the repercussions of this Sentezi for the Alevis and the violent political incidents in the 1930s and the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The Alevi Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s is discussed in part four of this book. Karin Vorhoff ’s contribution on the understanding of this revival deals with processes of Alevi community formation. This Alevi revival, Vorhoff argues, is not about reviving Alevi culture, but about reformulating and reshaping it. She discusses attempts to unite Alevis as a Turkish social and political force and those who consider Alevism as a culture, without racial dimensions. In ‘Zazaname: Media and Music in the Alevi Renaissance’ Leyla Neyzi elaborates on the role of new media in the emergence of a Zaza-identity. She discusses the case of the music group Metin-Kemal Kahraman and the rediscovering of a Dersim-Zaza ethnic-religious and regional identity. Elise Massicard takes the annual Hacıbekta{ Festival as case study in order to, as she writes, ‘try to understand, if not what Alevism is, at least how it works’. Massicard analyses the Festival as an example of a ‘productive misunderstanding’ that is contributing towards

introduction

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masking differences towards a diversity of actors in the Alevi community and with relation to the state. Ay{e Betul Çelik examines the revival and convergence of Alevi and Kurdish identities among Kurdish migrants in Istanbul, which have interacted with home town/village identity (hem{ehrilik) among Alevi Kurds from the 1970s up to the present day. Çelik investigates how exclusive the three identities are in each period, and how each alternatively reinforced and challenged each other. She also notes the effect of Turkish state policies on the mushrooming of Alevi consciousness in the late 1980s—expressed in the resurgence of Alevi cultural manifestations and Alevi publications. By the 1990s a real change occurred, she argues, in which Kurdish aspects of identity began to dominate over Aleviness among Alevi Kurds. Paradoxically, this embracing of Kurdishness did not result in the withering away of hem{ehrilik, since the three identities have tended to intermingle in practice. In her view, the hem{ehri associations therefore continue to function although their continued existence is less guaranteed in the face of new, external pressures. Isabelle Rigoni investigates the path towards Alevi identity of Alevis in Europe. She argues that it was this European Alevi revival that initiated the resurgence of Alevi identity within Turkey itself—although the European Alevi renaissance was itself deeply influenced by events in Turkey such as the 1980 coup and more recent violent anti-Alevi incidents. Rigoni believes that European Alevis’ self-conception has altered significantly since the early 1960s; these Alevis are now more willing than they were initially to refer to themselves as Alevis. She also stresses that Alevi migrants in Europe are more accurately understood ‘more as a migratory group with a strong identity and political consciousness . . . than as a diaspora’ . . . Transterritoriality is nowadays a part of Alevism. Part five of this book deals with the relations of ‘the Alevi’ with the Kurdish national movement. Michiel Leezenberg elaborates on the ambivalent relationship between the ‘Alevi-Kurds’ (or Kurdish Alevis) and the Kurdish national movement. Leezenberg refers to discussions about the Dersim rebellion in 1937–1938, which had long been claimed by Kurdish nationalists to be a Kurdish rebellion against the Kemalist State. Since the 1990s some Alevi Kurds began claiming that this revolt had been of a Zaza-nationalist character, with others claiming the rebellion was ‘Zaza-Alevi’. Leezenberg also argues that the Alevi revival forced the PKK to take a more accommodating

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and pluralist position towards the Alevis. Hans-Lukas Kieser’s contribution deals with the relation between Alevis, Armenians and Kurds in the era of Atatürk, 1908–1938. Kieser argues that the Alevis hoped for an enhancement of their status with the seizure of power by the Young Turks, but were bitterly disappointed with the development of an exclusive Sunni-Turkish identity of the movement. Kieser describes how the Republic preferred excessive violence and assimilation above pluralism and analyses the major revolts by the Alevi Kurds of Dersim. In part six of this volume, Emma Sinclair-Webb discusses the relations between the political left and the Alevis. She refers to the selfidentification of many Alevis with the political left in Turkey, but also to the MHP ultra-nationalists, who portrayed Alevis as the natural allies of the left. Sinclair-Webb argues that this is not a question of an ‘organic’ relationship between the two, but as a historical convergence of interests between the political left and the Alevis. Together, the collected articles not only give a comprehensive portrait of Turkey’s ‘Alevi enigma’. They also contribute to a better understanding of the development of social identities in Turkey and of the formation of modern Turkey. Joost Jongerden, Wageningen Paul White, Sydney August 2002

PART ONE

ALEVIS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH

ALEVISM AND THE MYTHS OF RESEARCH: THE NEED FOR A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA Hamit Bozarslan

As the title suggests, this article will not focus on the evolution of Alevi movements or the problems they face. It will even be less interested in Alevism as a system of belief. Simply put, I have two ambitions. The first is to question the formation of the Alevi historiographical discourse and the reasons why it become the consensual discourse of the scholars on this issue. The second is to underline the necessity of serious historical and sociological work, which is still sadly absent from research on the Alevis.

The Postulates of the Current Research A scholar interested in Alevism is struck by the scarcity of historical, sociological and anthropological works. This contrasts sharply with the abundance of high quality researches on Alevism as belief.1 Two factors may explain this contrast: First, the normative discourses emphasising theological aspects are by far dominant in the current literature. Second, some myths are constantly reproduced by scholars, becoming thus unquestioned research postulates. The most important of those postulates are the following: • The Alevis were repressed by the despotic Sunni Ottoman state for centuries and were opposed to it; • Later on, they contracted an alliance with the ‘secular’ Kemalist regime against Sunni domination and theocracy; • In the post-Kemalist period, they become, once again, opponents of the ‘anti-secularist’ and ‘reactionary’ state. This changing attitude is to be explained by the democratic and secularist nature of Alevism, which ‘naturally’ contracted an alliance with the left-wing opposition in Turkey. 1 See, however: Gökalp (1980); Bayart (1982): 109–20; Laçiner (1989: 233–54); Dumont (1991: 155–72); Olsson, Özdalga and Raudvere (1996); Kehl-Bodrogi, Kellner-Heinkele and Otter-Beaujean (1997) and Vorhoff (1995).

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hamit bozarslan

Before commenting upon these postulates, let me make it clear that, as a researcher, I cannot share their conceptual ground. I doubt that such normative concepts can be of much use in explaining Ottoman and Turkish history—or any history at all. Far from being theoretical and epistemological tools, such concepts are themselves elements in the legitimization of political practices. Quite independently from this divergence, however, the methodologies behind these postulates should also be questioned. The first postulate accepts the notion of ‘long-term history’ as its framework. Accordingly, the Ottoman Empire and Alevism appear as ossified entities. For centuries, they preserved unchanged features. Consequently, they ceased to be historically and sociologically determined categories and became ‘eternal’ entities, which are closed, by their ‘nature’, to any kind of evolution. Quite in opposition to this first methodological standpoint, the second postulate emphasizes the ‘breach’ in the ‘nature’ of the state. Accordingly, the nature of the state has changed radically under Kemalism, thus making inevitable a radical change of attitude of Alevism itself. The final postulate puts the emphasis on a new radical change of the nature of the state: it accepts as given that the state ‘returned back’ to its old ‘essence’, that is, to Sunnism and to despotism. As a consequence, this postulate does not explain political attitudes by power relations, but by essences determining social groups or power organs. It would be useless to add that most researchers have not questioned those postulates, but taken them as self-evident. The conclusions they reached could thus only confirm their veracity. Thanks to this research technique, the three postulates eluded any empirical questioning and were reproduced in one book after another.

‘Long-Term History’ As I have suggested, the first postulate uses what one could label ‘long-term history’ as its methodology. But this is quite different from the ‘longue durée’ of the French historians, in the sense that it is teleological and not scientific. The researchers who accept this postulate pay no attention to discontinuities in history. Moreover, they are unaware of difficulties and risks of the methodology of the ‘longue durée’. Their ‘long-term history’ does not mean a time framework of

alevism and the myths of research

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complex processes but the immobility of social and political dynamics. This approach plays a decisive role in the invention of an eternal Alevism featured by a constant opposition against the state. The anti-Ottoman insurrections of the heterodox groups—Kızılba{/Alevi on one hand, Bekta{i on the other hand—are thus presented as empirical proofs of this opposition. However, only an astonishing ignorance of differences between Alevism and Bekta{ism can allow someone to label summarily these revolts as Alevi. This ignorance itself can be explained by the understanding of the ‘long-term history’ as result of belief systems and not of social dynamics. There are undoubtedly many theological common points between Alevism and Bekta{ism (‘Kızılba{lik’ being rather a pejorative term). However, the available documents suggest that Alevism and Bekta{ism share neither the same geographical frameworks nor posses the same internal mechanisms and rules. While Bekta{ism, which attracted the Turkish intelligentsia during the Unionist period (1908–1918) is a religious brotherhood, Alevism, in contrast, designs a community whose borders are delineated by a sectarian dogma. Bekta{ism is dominantly Balkanic, while Alevism find its origins in Anatolia. Bekta{ism has been mainly urban, while the Alevism was, until recently, mainly rural. Perhaps more importantly, this methodology does not feel the necessity to question the meaning of the very concept ‘Alevi’ in the longue durée. It seems obvious, however, that over the centuries the internal ethnic and religious borders between the Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire did not ossify. Irrespective of their real or imaginary relations with Shi"a, the concepts ‘Alevi’, ‘Kızılba{’ or even ‘Bekta{i’ were used to denote a nebulous entity embracing various religious or political oppositions, thus forbidding us from labelling all heterodox challenges of the Ottoman period as ‘Alevi’. The Ottoman-Persian wars and particularly the offensives of Sultan Selim II went hand-in-hand with massacres of partisans of Ali or the Persian Safavid Shah. Similarly, the revolts classified as ‘rafizi’ were spread throughout many parts of Anatolia. But the opposition against the state and all those revolts did not have an exclusively sectarian ground (Akda