“Let's Reclaim Our History and Culture!”— Imagining Alevi Community in Contemporary Turkey

Abstract

Istanbul squatter area killed two people and left several others injured. The mass rally that followed the shooting quickly turned into a violent political protest, and more than twenty people were shot dead by police. Though for some ten years the Alevis of Turkey had been the subject of a lively public debate in the country itself, the massacre drew world attention to a socioreligious group that had to then been more or less unknown. My contribution to the understanding of the process of revival and cultural self-assertion that has recently grasped the Alevi community will first sketch the background and contours of the theoretical problem and then will consider the role of history and tradition in the processes of the formation and maintenance of this movement. Simultaneously I hope to introduce orientalists to