Hege Markussen on organising as Alevi in Turkey Today. Reflections from Recent Fieldwork in Ankara

The Alevis, a non-recognised, but nevertheless visible and organized religious minority in Turkey, has been studied by international research communities since the late 1980s. Much has been said about the Alevi movement that started in Germany in the late 1980s and spread almost immediately to Turkey and other European countries where Alevis reside. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Alevi associations were established which claimed societal visibility, equal citizenship, equality in the domains of religious practices and reformation of the mandatory religious education in Turkey. During the AKP reign since 2002, the relations between the state and Alevi communities have been tense and marked by mistrust.

 How are the conditions for Alevis in Turkey today, then? In 2023, after decades of AKP rule, a devastating earthquake in the eastern parts of the country, and after Tayyip Erdoğan once again consolidated his power in the Presidential Elections? This presentation provides a snapshot of ways in which Alevis organise in Turkey today and how recent changes in the state’s interest in Alevism creates new opportunities, challenges, and internal conflicts. The presentation is based on recent fieldworks in Ankara as a part of a Swedish Research Council funded project on Alevi life and family histories and the understanding of relations between religion and politics in the history of modern Turkey.

 Hege Markussen is researcher in History of Religions and the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University. She received her PhD in 2012 on an ethnographical study of an Alevi association in Istanbul. Her most recent publication is The Alevis in Modern Turkey and the Diaspora. Recognition, Mobilisation and Transformation 2022, Edinburgh University Press, co-edited with Derya Özkul.