Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

66 islamic political identity in turkeymillion; and Zaza Alevi-Dersimli, 1 million), regional, and class lines. 23 Kìzìlba7identity was an outcome of the tension between sedentary and nomadic lifestylesof Turkic tribes, the rivalry between the Ottoman and Safavid empires, and thepresence of heretical ideas in Anatolia. The nomadic Turks sought to preservetheir way of life and freedom against sedentary Ottoman polity, which soughtto control the population through Sunni Islam. After the establishment of theSafavid state in the sixteenth century, nomadic heterodox Anatolian tribes cooperatedwith the Safavids. Those who adapted a sedentary life and settled incities with their SuW lodges were called Bekta7i, and those who remainedseminomadic and resisted the state’s control came to be known as Alevi.The Ottoman state historically had viewed the Alevi community as a potentialWfth column for Shi’a Iran and accordingly treated Alevis as blasphemersand heretics. 24 The Alevis suVered a number of massacres at the hands of thecentral government, and they were forced to live in small isolated communitiesin the mountainous areas of Turkey. Within these rural and marginalized communities,Alevis formed their own syncretic religious-social worldview. The Aleviworldview tends to be about resistance and escape from the power of the stateand a way of building alternative communal life in the mountains of Anatolia.Almost all Alevi teaching and ceremonies stress communal autonomy and cohesionof the group vis-à-vis the state. Since the Sunni ulema and the state regardedthe Alevis as heretics, the Alevis could not build their own educationalstructures, and their sacred traditions were transmitted orally. Teaching andpreservation of religious knowledge took place by means of stories and anecdotes.Communal actions are informed by lived habit. These oral narratives alloweda plurality of beliefs and ideas to coexist, and it also kept the doors openfor outside ideas and beliefs to color Alevi narrative stories. In order to avoid theOttoman bureaucracy, the Alevis developed their own communal justice systemto solve disputes in their secret religious gatherings, known as cem or ayinicem. In these religious communal gatherings, they discuss and resolve disputes,reserving the imposition of dü7künlük (excommunication) for those who havecommitted grievous transgression against Alevi norms. 25This collective yet isolated psychology of solidarity played a key role inmaintaining the inner boundaries of the community, especially through dissimulationas a way of overcoming Sunni prejudices. The cohesion of Alevi collectiveidentity historically has been determined by external threats rather than afully articulated shared code of theology or conduct. This communal experienceof oppression at the hands of the Ottoman state inclined the Alevi communityto become a main supporter of the Kemalist reforms, if not of the War of Independenceitself. Alevis welcomed the disestablishment of Sunni Islam—whichhad long excluded them—in public life and the creation of a secular polity; initially,many Alevi notables actually presented themselves as ardent supportersof the Kemalist project of radical secularization and a homogeneous ethnolinguisticnationalism. 26Multiparty electoral systems tend to mobilize latent ethnocultural and sectariansolidarities because politicians often appeal to the politics of regional,ethnic, and sectarian diVerence. This was the case in Turkey after 1946. Many