This thesis analyzes the Justice and Development Party government

The present thesis intends to determine how the ethno-religious Alevi communities in Turkey survive and what are the main sources and factors helping them to sustain their group borders, especially as from the mid-1980s when these communities had started to reveal their identity clearly. It is important to state that the Kemalist regime was challenged by an obligatory change process on both economic and political grounds after the 1980 military coup in Turkey. Because of the rising of political Islam and the Kurdish ethno-nationalist movement, the modernist Kemalist regime and the Jacobin laicism have been subjected to criticism. In this tense period, one of the most important legitimation tools used by the state was the Alevi population, known by its dominant secular, modernist and Kemalist identity. For this reason, it can be proposed that in this era the occurrence of the Alevi identity&amp / #8217 / s revelation might have been supported or guarded by the Kemalist regime or state institutions. But another claim for the Alevi awakening is that the Alevi population had tried to define their identity against and/or parallel to the rising of Kurdish nationalism and the political Islamic movement. In sum, in this thesis I intend to clarify how the Alevi community constructs and/or protects its ethno-religious borders in these circumstances according to ethnicity theories.

This ethnographic study is on a sacred patrilineage, on the Ulusoy family members who are widely accepted by the Alevi Bektasi communities as the descendants of the eponymous founder of the Bektasi Order, Haci Bektas Veli. In line with the Shi&rsquo / ite tradition, it is claimed that Haci Bektas Veli inherited the batin, the esoteric aspect of the knowledge and the type of spirituality of this knowledge - walaya, by genealogical chain traced back to Ahl-al Bayt, and therefore undertook an initiating and supervisory role over his adherents. As the progeny of Haci Bektas Veli, the &Ccedil / elebis, namely the Ulusoy family, have also become the heirs of his sacred authority which was also inherited by their descendant through blood and transmigration. The Ulusoys have undertaken the role of spiritual guides and leaders of some other sacred dede (sacred guide) lineages called ocaks, as well as of the disciples of those ocaks, to regulate and supervise their life in accordance with the batin, divine knowledge. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to explore the maintenance and reproduction of the hereditary sanctity of the Ulusoy family during the Republican period during which, due to the secularization and modernization attempts of the Republic, the sanctity and sacred authority of the family has not been recognized as a social distinct category. To this end, I firstly examine the historical background of the family by situating the family in the Ottoman period. Having found out the continuities and ruptures in exercising of the sacred authority of the family over the disciples after the establishment of the Republic, I focus on the transformation of the sanctity and new forms of it by employing the concepts of space/place / kinship and, gender.

IDEOLOGICAL AMBIVALANCE OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE CASE OF &ldquo / MOTHERS OF MARTYRS&rdquo / IN TURKEY Gedik, Esra M.S. Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sibel Kalaycioglu Co-Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cem Deveci February 2008, 169 pages The main objective of this thesis is to understand how mothers who lost their sons during the conflicts in East and Southeast of Turkey articulate martyrdom of their sons with nationalism, religion and motherhood / how these women who lost their sons, as a woman and a mother define and express themselves and their experiences after martyrdom. Before their sons are martyrized, these women were ordinary housewives, with the death of their sons, they get a new identity: being a mother of a martyr. In this thesis, it is examined that what being a mother of a martyr means for these women. Moreover, this study attempts to examine certain perceptions and assumptions of these women about nationalism, the state, religion, war and peace after martyrdom. For this aim, this study is based on interviews with mothers who do not realize that they virtually live in a war, on motherhood, war, politics, and peace. Therefore, this research is the study to grasp how discourses of nationalism and religion shape this new identity: being a mother of a martyr. While these women were ordinary housewives before martyrdom, after their sons&rsquo / death, their narratives as mothers of martyrs are cultivated by discourses of nationalism and religion. Consequently, is it possible for these mothers to develop an anti-war discourse as happened for examples in the world?

The aim of this study is to explorehow the Alevi BektaSi identity is constructed through the memorial ceremonies of Haci BektaS veli on collective and individual level by different actors from the state agents to the Alevi BektaSis who participate in the ceremonies.

No description available.

Migration ist eines der präsentesten und prägendsten Themen unserer Zeit. In dieser Ethnographie richtet sich der Blick exemplarisch auf die Akteur*innen der (‚Gastarbeits‘-)Migration, hier konkret auf mehrgenerationelle Familien im transnationalen sozialen Migrations- und Verflechtungsraum Türkei-Deutschland. Im Fokus stehen dabei ihre Identitätsprozesse, In- und Exklusionserfahrungen und Empowermentpraxen nicht nur während der ‚Gastarbeits‘-, sondern auch in der Prä- und Postmigrationsphase. Migration wird in dieser Forschungsarbeit akteurszentriert aus dem konkreten sozialen, hier familiär eingebetteten Alltagshandeln und den Narrationen ihrer Subjekte in dichter teilnehmender Beobachtung beschrieben. Auf den Fersen der Familien(angehörigen) und ihren Identitäten in Bewegung erweiterte sich die Feldforschung zu einer multilokalen, -methodischen und -lingualen Ethnographie. Als Proband*innen traten dabei zwei Familien aus der ostanatolischen Dersim-Region der Türkei mit zwei Spezifika hervor; zum einen durch ihre ursprünglich familiäre Sprache Zazaki und zum anderen ihre Zugehörigkeit zur alevitischen (Glaubens-)Gemeinschaft, wobei innerhalb des alevitischen Glaubenssystems die eine einer Ocak- und die andere einer Talip-Familie angehört. Migration und darin auch Identitätsarbeit zeigen sich in dieser Familienethnographie als ein geistig, körperlich wie auch emotional konflikthafter und komplexer individuell-sozialer Prozess der permanenten Aushandlung und Veränderung unter Bedingungen von Diversität und intersektionaler Differenz. In ihrer Ambivalenz ist dieser Prozess somit Herausforderung und Chance zugleich. Resümierend lässt sich Identitätsarbeit im transnationalen Migrations- und Familienraum auch als Empowerment- und Powersharingarbeit beschreiben, als einem kreativ-interaktiven Handeln im „dritten Raum“, dem „Zwischenraum“ (BHABHA), in dem jenseits von Norm und Abweichung bzw. Insider- und Outsider-Positionalitäten (ELIAS/SCOTSON) „hybride“ bzw. „transkulturelle“ Identitäten und Lebensentwürfe möglichen werden und damit als dritte Positionalität die transformative Positionalität des Transsiders entsteht. / Migration is one of the most prominent and formative issues of our time. In this ethnography, the analytical gaze is trained on the actors of (guest work) migration, specifically on multi-generational families in the interwoven transnational migration space of Turkey-Germany. The focus is on their identity processes, experiences of inclusion and exclusion, and empowerment practices not only during the ‚guest work‘ phase, but also during the pre- and post-migration phases. In this study, migration is described in actor-centered fashion through the close participant-observation of concrete social actions embedded in the families’ everyday lives as well as the narratives of the research subjects. Following the family members and their identities in motion, the field research constitutes a multi-local, multi-method, and multi-lingual ethnography. The main research subjects are two families from the eastern Anatolian Dersim region of Turkey with two specific characteristics. On the one hand, the families speak Zazaki as their original native language. On the other, they belong to the Alevi (faith) community, whereby one belongs to an Ocak family within the Alevi belief system while the other belongs to a Talip family. Migration and the identity work associated with it emerge in this family ethnography as a mentally, physically, and emotionally complex individual and social process that requires constant negotiation and change under conditions of diversity and intersectional difference. In its ambivalence, this process is both a challenge and an opportunity. In sum, identity work in the transnational migration and family space can also be described as empowerment and power-sharing work, as creative, interactive action in the „third space“ or „in-between space“ (BHABHA). Beyond the positionalities of the norm and the exception, the insider and the outsider (ELIAS/SCOTSON), „hybrid“ or „transcultural“ identities and life plans become possible, and the transformative third positionality of the transsider emerges.

Often pointed to as the region’s model secular state, Turkey provides an instructive case study in how nationalism, in the name of conjuring ‘unity’, often produces the opposite effect. Indeed, the production of nationalism can create fractures amongst, as well as politicize, certain segments of a population, such as minority groups and women. This dissertation examines the long-term and present-day impacts on nationalist unity of a largely understudied event, the annexation of the border-city of Antakya from Syria in 1939, and its implications on the Arab Alawite population. In doing so, it deconstructs the dominant Turkish narrative on the annexation, rewrites the narrative drawing on oral history from the ground, and it shows how nation-building is a masculinist project that relies on powerfully gendered language through studying the national archives. The heart of the project, however, remains the investigation of the political, social, and religious subjectivity of Arab Alawite women, with an emphasis on resistance to the structures and practices sustained by the state and patriarchy. The Arab Alawites, once numerically dominant in the Antakya region, are now an ethno-religious minority group within the Turkish/Sunni-dominated state structure. Although Antakya was the last territory to join Turkey in 1939, ever since that time many of its Alawites have resisted assimilation through covert, yet peaceful, methods. Through this research, I show that a multiplicity of forces have increased the politicization of the Antiochian Alawite community and broadened their demands upon the Turkish state. My research highlights Alawite women’s leadership as a key driver of this process, thanks to the large-scale out migration of Alawite men, the increased socio-economic independence of Alawite women, and the perception of more progressive gender ideals being held by the members of this Muslim sect, when compared to those of nearby Sunni Turkish women. This dissertation relies on a postcolonial and feminist geopolitical analysis of the Turkish nationalist project to examine how the Turkish state has historically viewed Antakya and the Arab Alawites and how, in return, the experience and collective social and political memory of Alawites was formed. By utilizing innovative methodologies, this research shows how Alawite women are resisting/rewriting/reconfiguring political and social structures through everyday actions that shift the discourse on minorities and women on local and national scales.