The religious identity of Turkey’s Alevis, with the origins of their traditions, and in particular their relation to Islam, are the focus of a debate current in Turkey as well as in those western European countries with strong Turkish migrant populations. This debate began in the late 1980s, with the public coming-out of the Alevi community, when the Alevis set out on a manifest campaign to be recognized as a distinct cultural and/or religious tradition. Against the backdrop of (...) this debate, this article discusses the impact of Turkish politics of doxa on the possibilities of Alevi representation in Turkey. It gives particular attention to the implication of secularism and nationalism in the knowledge regime that subscribes heterodoxy to the Alevis – an ascription that secures their principal integratability in the Turkish nation, while at the same time preparing the ground for otherizing them from the Sunni majority perspective. (shrink)

For several decades, the international community has criticized Turkey for failing to uphold the human rights and freedoms of its citizens and for not realizing the principles of non-discrimination and equality within its borders. As Turkey’s European Union candidacy proceeds, religious groups such as the Alevis claim to face discrimination and violations of their human rights and freedoms by the Turkish state. The Justice and Development Party debated the Alevis’ problems and structured the Alevi Initiative, which conducted relevant (...) workshops and discussions. Alevi arguments regarding their places of worship and the state’s religious education policy were identified as their main challenges. Alevis argued that the state’s policies on religious education and places of worship discriminated against them and violated their human rights. Through several human rights law cases before domestic and international tribunals, Alevis requested fulfillment, protection, and assurance of their human rights and freedoms. Several court decisions agreed that Alevis’ human rights and freedoms were being violated. However, the challenges and demands of Alevis still persist, as they contend that they have not succeeded in gaining the human rights and freedoms as required in contemporary Turkey under the JDP government. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Anhand von Beispielen aus schiitischen und alevitischen Kontexten in Deutschland und der Türkei beschreibt der Artikel, wie beide Traditionen über gemeinsame Praxis und einen geteilten Symbolbestand religionshistorische Grenzen ihrer jeweiligen Traditionen ausblenden. Solcherlei Grenzen erscheinen dabei für wissenschaftssystematische Zusammenhänge wichtiger als für die untersuchten Akteure selbst. Denn die hier untersuchten Gruppen und Individuen artikulieren einen Selbstentwurf von Islam, in dem der Aspekt der Verbundenheit zur Familie des Propheten, den ehlibeyt, eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Unter Bezugnahme auf Fredrick Barths Einsichten (...) zu Ethnizität und Stuart Halls Theorie der Artikulation werden die Beispiele in Bezug auf Praxen der Abgrenzung und der Identifikation beschrieben und analysiert. Dabei wird zum einen danach gefragt, in welchem Verhältnis Abgrenzung und Identifikation zueinander stehen, und zum anderen, unter welchen Bedingungen die Akteure eine Form von Islam artikulieren können, der hier als „Ehlibeyt-Islam“ bezeichnet werden soll und der jenseits konfessionalisierter Sprache zu verorten ist. (shrink)

In this article, recent attempts by the Justice and Development Party to address the problems of Alevi citizens in Turkey are analysed. After briefly outlining the sources of Alevi revitalization in the 1990s, the article critically discusses different aspects of the Alevi Opening process. It concludes by arguing that the Alevi question reveals many aspects of the problematic nature of secularism in Turkey.

Exopraxis—a term for religious practices in places of worship associated with a religion not one’s own—is often associated with heteropraxis, a term for unorthodox religious practices. Heteropraxes, which may be shared by members of more than one religion, can diverge so widely from the orthopraxy and even orthodoxy of a dominant religion that government authorities will make strenuous attempts to suppress them. In Muslim Turkey, a growing proportion of the supporters of Sunni orthodoxy regard the veneration of certain trees, stones, (...) natural springs, and resting places of saintly persons and relics as forms of idolatry, heresy, or superstition. Alevi heteropraxis at such sites of wild piety are often accompanied by Sunni exopraxis. Heteropraxis and exopraxis do not everywhere or completely overlap, argues this introduction to a cluster of articles on exopraxis, but exopraxis is generally tolerant of, if not drawn to, heteropraxis. (shrink)

Tolerance is an ambivalent attitude. It allows living in plurality but not in equality. The tolerant tradition of the Ottoman Empire, for example, is based on a very clear political and social hierarchy between different religions. Dominants boast of their tolerant tradition. Tolerance is also about imposing limits on the other in a unilateral way. In Republican Turkey where theoretically all citizens are equal, the majority of Turkish-speaking Sunnis tolerate non-Muslim minorities, Alevis, Kurds. It is the ‘liberal’ currents of (...) this ethno-religious majority that pronounce themselves tolerant of others. However, minorities do not demand tolerance but equality because the history of Turkey for more than a century with the genocide of Armenians, pogroms, massacres, deportations have shown those who say they are tolerant can switch to each moment in extreme violence against those whom they now consider intolerable. In this framework, the discourse of tolerance prepares the ground for the reproduction of the... (shrink)

Chelebi (Çelebi) Sulṭān is a Ṣūfī poet. Due to poor and limited sources, there is a hardness in finding accurate and sufficient information about him. Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı claimed that this anonymous poet could be Oğlan Sheikh İsmāʿil-i Maʿşūḳī (d. 1539) from Bayramī-Melāmī by relying on the unanimous ghazal recorded in Ḥālet Efendi 800 in Suleymaniye Library. However, the fact that the aforementioned ghazal with simple copy variations published in Eşrefoğlu Rūmī Diwan weakens the credibility of his argument that Chelebi Sulṭān (...) could be Oğlan Sheikh İsmāʿil-i Maʿşūḳī. Though the acknowledgment of this data, Gölpınarlı still insisted on the credibility of his claim that the ghazal belongs to Oğlan Sheikh. Moreover he argued that the claims suggesting that the ghazal belongs to Eşrefoğlu Rūmī (d. 1469) should be questioned. Other than this ghazal, there is one more qasida (ḳasīde) with having gizlidir word after the rhyme associate to Chelebi Sulṭān, and an annotation to this qasida by Āyīne-zāde Meḥmed Şemseddīn-i Sirozī (d. 1688/89). However, neither the qasida and ghazal attributed Chelebi Sulṭān nor the Āyīne-zāde’s annotation provide satisfying information to identify the identity of the poet. Therefore, it can be claimed that Chelebi Sulṭān’s identification is based on weak arguments. No more evidence can develop these estimations into evidence-based arguments. This article tries to provide a virtual framework for the identity of Chelebi Sulṭān. In this context, the article firstly discusses Chelebi Sulṭān’s disposition and popularity on Ṣūfī groups by considering the contents of the manuscripts mentioning him. Then, it analyzes whether Chelebi Sulṭān is associated with Ḥurūfīs or not by focusing on the ism-musemmā subject in the two first couplets of the qasida attributed to the Ṣūfī poet. Finally, the article speculates whether the poet called Chelebi Sulṭān in literature could be Misālī (d. 1577), or not, who is one of the Ḥurūfī poets. The subject of Chelebi Sulṭān's connection with Ḥurūfīsm is examined under two titles in the article. The possibility of Chelebi Sulṭān to be Misālī, one of the Ḥurūfī poets, was discussed based on the qasida with nedür rhyme. In this regard, there are two assumptions. The first one is that the pseudonym Misālī is mentioned in the qasida, and the second evidence is that there is a qasida with nedür word after rhyme belonging to Chelebi Sulṭān in the two copies of the Misālī Diwan. However, although the mentioned qasida exists in the recent copies, this qasida is not found in the oldest copies of the diwan. Therefore it is possible to conclude that this lack weakens the possibility that Chelebi Sulṭān could be Misālī, one of the Ḥurūfī poets. The second title is related to the issue of the ism-musemmā in the first two couplets of the qasida with nedür word after rhyme. Through this analysis, it was discussed whether Chelebi Sulṭān could be Ḥurūfī or not. At this point, it is revealed that there is a similarity between the two couplets of Chelebi Sulṭān in the qasida with nedür word after rhyme on the issue of ism-musemmā and some other couplets of Ḥurūfī poets (Nesīmī / Ḫalîlî, Misālī, et al.) on the same issue. Besides, the views of a few groups, apart from the Ḥurūfī Poets, that discussed ism-musemmā issue in their poetry, were evaluated. The article refers to the Ṣūfī poet's qasida with nedür word after rhyme while discussing the issue of which groups favored Chelebi Sulṭān more and it also tried to determine which groups read this qasida at that period. To discuss the general content of the manuscript, the manuscript registered in Suleymaniye Library Mihrisah Sultan number 185, the corpus cataloged in Suleymaniye Library, Galata Mevlevihanesi 233, and the manuscript cataloged in Millet Library Ali Emiri Collection (AEArb) 4341, were examined. Thus it can be claimed both Chelebi Sulṭān and his qasida were popular among heterodox groups, as it was observed that the qasida also exists in the works of Ḥurūfī, Alevi-Bektashi, and Bayramī-Melāmī groups. Despite all this, there is no clear conclusion regarding the identity of Chelebi Sulṭān. Nevertheless, it is possible to say that Chelebi Sulṭān was popular among heterodox Ṣūfī groups and that some Ḥurūfī views influenced him. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, on 12 September, 1963, the association agreement between the European Economic Community (EEC) and Turkey was signed in Ankara. However, in contrast to many other countries who applied later on, Turkey has not yet become a member of the EU. Nevertheless, Turkey’s candidacy to join the EU is still one of the most considerable and controversial topics within the European political arena. Within the accession negotiations, apart from human rights and the Kurdish and the Cypriot issues, one (...) of the greatest challenges to Turkey’s successful candidacy is the issue of respect for and protection of minorities. It might indeed represent an unsolvable problem, which will ultimately block Turkey joining the EU. Neither the EU nor Turkey has really come to terms or dealt with what the EU sees as an “unsatisfactory” protection of minorities in Turkey. What lies at the root of this disagreement is what the term “minority” actually means. Due to Turkey’s own nation state concept as being a united and undivided country and to the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, which defined Turkey as a nation, the country only recognises non-Muslim minorities. Moreover, contrary to the wording of the minority protection clauses in the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey restricts its recognition of non-Muslim minorities only to the Greek, Armenian and Jewish religious populations. Although being a non-Muslim group as well, the Assyrians are excluded from the Turkish concept of minorities and, therefore, also from minority protection. In contrast to that, the EU’s concept of minority includes ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, which means that according to the EU’s concept of minorities, also ethnic minorities like the Kurds, linguistic minorities like the Laz and religious minorities like the Alevis are included in the term “minority” and, therefore, these minorities should benefit from specific minority protection rights. To find a common basis for discussing the unsatisfactory issue of minority rights in Turkey, the concept of “ethnic groups” is introduced by the author as the most promising approach to deal with this unreconciled conceptual difference. According to this concept, ethnic groups could form a sub-identity of Turkishness and help build a legal basis to the treatment of minority groups founded on human rights, which would be compatible with both Turkish and EU Law. (shrink)

The book titled “Diaries of Sociology” was penned by Dr. Necdet Subaşı and published under the authority of Mahya Press in 2018. Its first edition was published in 2018 and it consists of 41 different articles that have been scripted through the years by Subaşı. In other words, all of the articles placed in this book were presented as collected works. Basically, it is seen that the author evaluates certain issues that societies, face at our present. The articles were written (...) between 2007-2017, and they discuss several issues concerning the concept of family, the nature of religious groups, the relationship between politics and religion, and figures of the religious leader. As the author played a significant role as a moderator during the workshops about Alevi Studies, his writings, on these topics, are very valuable. Having written that religion and language have an influence on the formation of identity as much as each other, Subaşı underlined the importance and role of religion and language in the protection of their Turkish identity for those Turks who lived in a “diaspora”. In this book, he also makes some assertations regarding the position of the role of religion in Turkish modernization in the manner of religion and politics. Additionally, in the last chapter of his book, the exploitation of faith by a terrorist organization during the coup attempt in 2016 is mentioned. Then the weakness of the men working under the service of Religious affairs or departments of Theology who are supposed to sense the danger earlier and warn society was highlighted. Thus, it is necessary to remind at this point that a genuine work of Necdet Subaşı titled "Sosyoloji Günlükleri" contributed academic environment primarily related to the field of Sociology of Religion as it reveals the relations between religion and society in the sense of a sociological perspective. (shrink)