“The Light of the Alevi Fire Was Lit in Germany and then Spread to Turkey”: A Transnational Debate on the Boundaries of Islam

Abstract

Research on the transnational Alevi Muslim community in Berlin, Vienna, and Istanbul suggests that the Muslim identities and political agendas that seek recognition in Europe are largely made in Europe and hence are indigenous to Europe. Thus it is the political, legal, and social context of the post‐Cold War European Union and the unique conditions of individual European countries that shape the way Muslim communities define themselves in that sociopolitical geography. These new identities that come into being at the core of Europe transform the debates and definitions of Islam in the Muslim‐majority peripheries of Europe rather than vice versa.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign and the University of California, Irvine. A version of this article will appear in a book published by California University Press in 2009 titled Transnational Transcendence edited by Thomas Csordas. The author would like to thank the audiences in two settings: Marc David Baer, Keith McNeal, and Damani Patridge for their critical comments and Gökçe Yurdakul and Şebnem Köşer Akçapar for helping give the article its final shape. Marc David Baer participated in countless cem gatherings with the author, and Alev Korun introduced her to Alevi leaders in Vienna. She is most grateful to Alevis in Berlin, Vienna, and Istanbul who welcomed her to their cemevis, generously shared their lokma, and patiently explained what it means to be an Alevi.

Notes

1. Norbert Geis, “Integration ist Ohne Alternative: Rede zur Auslander‐Integration und Islamismus Bekampfung,” [Integration is without an Alternative: Discussion over Foreigner Integration and Islamism Debate] CDU/CSU Fraktion in Deutschen Bundestag, 2004, www.cducsu.de; Angela Merkel, “Merkel verspricht Regierung der Taten,” [Merkel Promises of Government Action] Spiegel Online, 2005, www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland; see also Douglas Klusmeyer, “A Guiding Culture for Immigrants? Integration and Diversity in Germany,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2001), pp. 519–32.

2. Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christoper Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 44; Anna Korteweg, “The Murder of Theo van Gogh: Gender, Religion and the Struggle over Immigrant Integration in the Netherlands,” in Michal Bodemann and Gökçe Yurdakul (eds.), Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 147–66.

3. John Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like the Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Christian Joppke, “State Neutrality and Islamic Headscarf Laws in France and Germany,” Theory and Society, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2007), pp. 313–42.

4. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

5. Esra Özyürek, “The Politics of Cultural Unification, Secularism, and the Place of Islam in the New Europe,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 32, No. 4 (2005), pp. 509–12.

6. John Borneman, Subversion of International Order: Studies in Political Anthropology of Culture (Albany: State University of New York, 1997), p. 488.

7. Douglas R. Holmes, Integral Europe: Fast‐Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. xi.

8. Borneman, Subversion of International Order.

9. John Borneman argues that “Europeanism, tied to values of progress, liberty, and freedom did not extend throughout the continent until the end of the eighteenth century.” See Borneman, Subversion of International Order, p. 490.

10. Charter of European Identity, 1997. http://www.cise.it/eurit/Eurplace/diba/citta/cartaci.html.

11. Esra Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

12. Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern.

13. Levent Soysal, “Europe and the Topography of Migrant Youth Culture in Berlin,” in Mabel Berezin and Martin Schain (eds.), Europe without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 197–215. In his work on migrant youth culture in Berlin, Soysal similarly argues against conceptualization of Turkish youth as lost in an in‐between state. He states “their cultural projects are not revivals of an essentialized Turkishness (or Islam) in response to alien formations of modernity. Rather (…) their projects contribute to the remapping, remaking of the new Europe, unsettling the conventional configurations and conceptions of belonging and otherness” (p. 220).

14. Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

15. Taylor, Multiculturalism; Nancy Fraser, Justice Interreptus: Critical Reflections on the “Post‐Socialist” Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997); Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

16. For a discussion of different approaches to citizenship in Europe, see Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) and Riva Kastoryano, Negotiating Identities: State and Immigrants in France and Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

17. According to survey research conducted by Ali Aktaş among Alevis who visited the main Alevi shrine in Haci Bektash in the 1990s, 43 percent defined Alevism as a sect, 17 percent as a way of life, 16 percent as culture, and ten percent as religion (in Aykan Erdemir, “Incorporating Alevis: The Transformation of Governance and Faith‐based Collective Action in Turkey,” Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University, 2004), p. 31.

18. Irene Melikoff, Hacı Bektaş: Efsaneden Gerçeğe [Hacı Bektaş: From Myth to Reality] (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Kitapları, [1998] 2004). However, some scholars such as Gunter Seufert identify Alevis as the Shi’a community in Turkey; see Gunter Seufert, “Between Religion and Ethnicity: A Kurdish‐Alevi Tribe in Globalizing Istanbul,” in A. Öncü and P. Weyland (eds.), Space, Culture, and Power (London: Zed Books, 1997), pp. 157–76.

19. Eric Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).

20. Selim Deringil, “ ‘There is No Compulsion in Religion’: On Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1839–1856,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 2 (2000), pp. 542–75.

21. Herald Schüller, Türkiye’de Sosyal Demokrasi: Particilik, Hemşerilik, Alevilik [Social Democracy in Turkey: Partisanship, Co‐locality, Alevism] (Istanbul: İletişim, 1999); Hülya Küçük, The Role of Bektaşis in Turkey’s National Struggle (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

22. Joost Jongerden, “Violation of Human Rights and the Alevis in Turkey,” in Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden (eds.), Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 71–89.

23. For an interesting comparison of the fate of the syncretistic Muslim‐Jewish group called Dönme and the Alevis after the foundation of the Turkish Republic see Marc Baer, “The Double Bind of Race and Religion: The Conversion of the Dönme to Secular Turkish Nationalism,” Comparative Studies in Society and HiSociety and History, Vol. 46, No. 4 (2004), pp. 682–708, who argues that because Dönme were ostensibly Muslim, they were left undisturbed under the Islamic Ottoman Empire but suffered discrimination under the nationalist Turkish Republic because they were considered as racially non‐Turkish. The heterodox Alevis, however, were at times persecuted by religious cleansing movements under the Ottomans but were embraced by the Turkish Republic since they were considered racially Turkish.

24. The religiously inclined Welfare Party won major electoral victories in the 1994 local elections and became the first party in the 1995 general elections, receiving 21 percent of the votes, but it had to enter into a coalition with the center‐right True Path Party. The party resigned following the 1997 recommendations of the Turkish army to the government. In 1998 the Welfare Party was disbanded on the basis of having violated the secularist principle of the Turkish Republic and was replaced by the Virtue Party. This party was then replaced by the Justice and Development Party, which adopted a pro‐capitalist and pro‐Western policy and came to power in the 2002 elections, receiving 34 percent of the votes.

25. http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/turkish/tanitimistatistik.asp.

26. David Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 13.

27. For different categorizations of the contemporary Alevi movement see Tahire Erman and Emrah Goker, “Alevi Politics in Contemporary Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2000), pp. 99–118; Faruk Bilici, “The Function of Alevi‐Bektashi Theology in Modern Turkey,” in T. Olsson, E. Ozdalga and C. Raudvere (eds.), Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious, and Social Perspectives, (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1998), pp. 51–62; and Reha Çamuroğlu, Değişen Koşullarda Alevilik [Alevism in Changing Conditions] (Istanbul: Ant Yayınları, 1992).

28. Şehriban Şahin, “The Alevi Movement: Transformation from Secret Oral to Public Written Culture in National and Transnational Spaces,” Ph.D. dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2001.

29. Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey.

30. Helga Rittersberger‐Tiliç, “Development and Reformulation of a Returnee Identity as Alevi,” in T. Olsson, E. Ozdalga and C. Raudvere (eds.), Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious, and Social Perspectives (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1998), pp. 69–87.

31. Some attribute the Alevi revival to the loss of popularity of the socialist ideals to which many Alevis subscribed; see Herald Schüller, Türkiye’de Sosyal Demokrasi: Particilik, Hemşerilik, Alevilik [Social Democracy in Turkey: Partisanship, Co‐locality, and Alevism] (Istanbul: İletişim, 1999); and Karin Vorhoff, “The Past in the Future: Discourses on the Alevis in Contemporary Turkey,” in Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden (eds.), Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview, pp. 94–109. Erdermir suggests that it is attributed to neoliberalism, which promoted the shift of power to nongovernmental organizations that encouraged the Alevi organization in Turkey; see Aykan Erdemir, “Incorporating Alevis: The Transformation of Governance and Faith‐based Collective Action in Turkey,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2004. When one asks Alevis in Turkey and in Europe about the Alevi revival, they immediately mention the 1993 massacre in Sivas of 37 Alevi artists who were staying at a hotel to participate in a conference on Alevism and were murdered by Sunni fanatics. Many Alevis interviewed claimed that when this event happened they realized that they needed to organize and have their voices heard. To this day, at the entrance of many cemevis one can see pictures of the victims of the massacre.

32. Leyla Neyzi, “Zazaname: The Alevi Renaissance, Media, and Music in the Nineties,” in Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden (eds.), Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview pp. 112–24; Isabella Rigoni, “Alevis in Europe: A Narrow Path Towards Visibility,” in Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden (eds.), Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview, pp. 159–73.

33. Ayse Şimşek Çağlar, “German Turks in Berlin: Migration and Their Quest for Social Mobility,” Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1994; Ruth Mandel, “‘Fortress Europe’ and the Foreigners Within: Germany’s Turks,” in Victoria A. Goddard, Josep R. Llobera and Cris Shore (eds.), The Anthropology of Europe: Identity and Boundaries in Conflict (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), pp. 113–24.

34. Eva Østergaard‐Nielsen, Transnational Politics: Turks and Kurds in Germany (London: Routledge, 2003).

35. Rittersberger‐Tiliç, “Development and Reformulation of a Returnee Identity as Alevi.”

36. Şehriban Şahin, “The Rise of Alevism as a Public Religion,” Current Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (2005), pp. 465–85.

37. See Şahin, “The Rise of Alevism as a Public Religion.” There have been attempts among Turkish citizens to organize collectively. Yet, the political, ethnic, and religious cleavages among have made this impossible. See Østergaard‐Nielsen, Transnational Politics.

38. Ayhan Kaya, “Multicultural Clientelism and Alevi Resurgence in the Turkish Diaspora: Berlin Alevis,” New Perspectives on Turkey, Vol. 18 (Spring 1998), pp. 23–49.

39. Ruth Mandel, “Ethnicity and Identity among Migrant Guestworkers in West Berlin,” in N. Gonzales and C. McCommon (eds.), Conflict, Migration, and Expression of Ethnicity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 60–74.

40. Many in Turkey also emphasized similar symbolism between Alevism according to its real sources and Christianity. The topic came up when Alevis assumed that the author’s American husband is a Christian and wanted to show him there is not much difference between their beliefs and—what they supposed to be—his beliefs.

41. Kira Kosnick, “Speaking in One’s Voice: Representational Strategies of Alevi Turkish Migrants on Open‐access Television in Berlin,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 30, No. 5 (2004), pp. 979–94.

42. The Alevi Manifesto can be found in Riza Zelyut, Öz Kaynaklarina Göre Alevilik (Istanbul: Anadolu Kültür Yayınları, 1990).

43. Rittersberger‐Tılıç, “Development and Reformulation of a Returnee Identity as Alevi.”

44. This development followed the fact that the Islamic Federation in Berlin was granted the right to teach Islam in classes in 2000; see Havva Engin, “Avrupa’da Hayatın ve İnancın Diyaloğu İçin: Alevi‐Islam Dersi” [Alevi‐Islam Classes: For the Dialogue of Life and Belief in Europe] in Ismail Engin and Havva Engin (eds.), Alevilik (Istanbul: Kitap Yayinevi, 2004), pp. 499–504.

45. Ibid.

46. Gerdien Jonker, “What is Other about Other Religions? The Islamic Communities in Berlin between Integration and Segregation,” Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2000), pp. 311–29.

47. Fetzer and Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany, p. 108

48. Ibid. German law requires religious groups to formally submit an application in their region and to show that they have existed for at least 30 years, that the members of the group constitute at least 1/1000th of the total population in that region, and that the group respects the law.

49. In interviews, Sunni Muslim activists in Austria stated that having this category works to their benefit, especially when there is a need to defend needs and rights of Muslims. Practicing Muslims in Austria and Germany agree that today it is much easier to live as a Muslim in Austria than in Germany.

50. It is likely that one of the reasons why the Alevi movement and organization is not strong in France, despite the fact that France is second to Germany for the number of Turkish‐origin residents, is the lack of such a law.

51. Gökçe Yurdakul, “Muslim Political Organization of Turks in Germany,” Council of European Studies Newsletter, Vol. 35, Nos. 1 & 2 (2005), p. 10.

52. Engin, “Avrupa’da Hayatın ve Inancın Diyalogu İçin” [For the Dialogue of Life and Belief in Europe]; Jonker, “What is Other about Other Religions.”

53. Fetzer and Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany.

54. Cihan Tuğal, “Islamcılığın Dini Coğunluk Alanındaki Krizi: Alevi AçmaziıHakkında Bazı Açılımlar,” [The Crisis of Islamism in the Field of Religious Pluralism: Some Thoughts on the Alevi Paradox] in Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekingil (eds.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Islamcılık [Political Thought in Modern Turkey: Islamism], Vol. 6, (Istanbul: Birikim Yayınları, 2004), pp. 493–502.

55. For a discussion of different Alevi organizations see Çamuroğlu, Değişen Koşullarda Alevilik [Alevism in Changing Conditions]; Erman and Göker, “Alevi Politics in Contemporary Turkey;” and Şahin, “The Alevi Movement.”

56. The Cem Association website states that Sunni Islam is the Arab interpretation of Islam, and Shi’a Islam is the Persian interpretation. www.cemvakfi.org.

57. However, as many international human rights and international human rights watch reports indicate, Turkish governments have been inconsistent and often unwilling to provide these rights granted to non‐Muslim minorities. See Dilek Kurban, “Confronting Equality: The Need for Constitutional Protection of Minorities on Turkey’s Path to the European Union,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2003), pp. 151–214.

58. For a critical discussion of the Ottoman administration of religious groups, also called the “millet system,” see Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

59. Meltem Müftüler‐Baç, “Turkey’s Political Reforms and the Impact of the European Union,” South European Society and Politics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2005), pp. 17–31.

60. Many of these changes were of major importance, such as the abolishment of the death penalty and other seemingly small but symbolically substantial changes, such as the granting of rights for broadcasting and education in ethnic languages. According to some observers, the members of the Turkish parliament have been more open to granting these rights since the decade‐long war between Kurdish guerillas and the Turkish army seemed to have come to a conclusion with the victory of the latter and the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdish guerilla movement. However, though the implementation of the constitutional amendments granting these rights has been hesitant, the restrictions still apply and citizens cannot often practice these rights freely.

61. Radikal, October 9, 2004.

62. Akşam, May 24, 2005.

63. Ibid.

64. Here it is important to note that many Kurdish activists also were not happy about the Kurds being defined as a minority in the report. Leaders of the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP), representing the Kurdish voice, also argued that Kurds are one of the foundational elements of the country and are of majority. Radikal, October 14, 2004.

65. Sami Zubaida, “Islam in Europe,” Critical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2 (2003), pp. 88–98.

66. Melissa Anne Parker, “The Europeanization of Islam: The Role of the Multi‐Level Structure of the EU,” paper presented at the Ninth Biennial International Conference of the European Union Studies Association, Austin, TX, March 31‐April 2, 2005.

67. Adam Lebor, A Heart Turned East (London: Little Brown and Company, 1997); Peter Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining Umma (London: Routledge, 2001).