Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-12T13:06:49.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Visibility through invisibility: Spatialized political subjectivities of Alevi youth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2020

Tolga Özata
Tolga Özata*
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher, tolgaozata@sabanciuniv.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates Alevi youth subjectivities in a neighborhood of İstanbul, Okmeydanı, in which mainly Alevi people live, through the youth’s self-positionings in revolutionary groups, which has deeply marked the highly politicized history of the district. The grievances of Okmeydanlı Alevi youth have grown increasingly complex, stemming from experiences of violence, family legacies of victimhood, and, in recent years, new forms of exclusion. Coupled with generational ruptures between youth and their families in experiencing Alevi identity, Alevi youth have created a political identity and collectivity in the sphere of revolutionary politics. In this politicization, Okmeydanı becomes a spatialization of resistance which gives the youth a sense of power to achieve solidarity and find intimacy to defend themselves and their rights. Moreover, for the youth, engaging in a revolutionary political identity enables them to define themselves and redefine Alevi identity in contrast with, and sometimes against, the perceptions of their families. I argue that it is through this performativity that Okmeydanlı Alevi youth achieve self-empowerment and identity construction; and through this performativity in street politics that the youth render their agencies and self-representations visible on public space.

Keywords

Youthrevolutionary groupspolitical violenceAleviOkmeydanı
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 62 , May 2020 , pp. 3 - 25
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Author’s Note: I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Leyla Neyzi for her support and guidance both during and after my ethnographic fieldwork. I am also very grateful to Prof. Ayşe Öncü and Özgün Çalık-Özata for their support and invaluable feedbacks on an early draft of this article. I would also like to thank the article’s anonymous reviewers for their comments and insightful suggestions.

References

Alberoni, Francesco. Movement and Institution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Aslan, Şükrü. 1 Mayıs Mahallesi: 1980 Öncesi Toplumsal Mücadeler ve Kent. İstanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık, 2004.Google Scholar
Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique, no. 65 (1995): 125–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayata, Ayşe. “The Emergence of Identity Politics in Turkey.” New Perspectives on Turkey 17 (1997): 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilici, Faruk. “The Function of Alevi-Bektashi Theology in Modern Turkey.” In Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives, edited by Olsson, Tord, Özdalga, Elisabeth, and Raudvere, Catharina, 59–73. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Çalışkan, Koray. “Toward a New Political Regime in Turkey: From Competitive toward Full Authoritarianism.” New Perspectives on Turkey 58 (2018): 5–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Çamuroğlu, Reha. “Alevi Revivalism in Turkey.” In Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives, edited by Olsson, Tord, Özdalga, Elisabeth, and Raudvere, Catharina, 93–9. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Collins, John. Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency. New York: NYU Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darıcı, Haydar. “Politics of Privacy: Forced Migration and the Spatial Struggle of the Kurdish Youth.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13, no. 4 (2011): 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porta, Della, Donatella. Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Dressler, Markus. “Religio-Secular Metamorphoses: The Re-Making of Turkish Alevism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76, no. 2 (2008): 280–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Markus. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erman, Tahire, and Göker, Emrah. “Alevi Politics in Contemporary Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 4 (2000): 99–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ersan, Vehbi. 1970’lerde Türkiye Solu. İstanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık, 2013.Google Scholar
Ertan, Mehmet. “The Latent Politicization of Alevism: The Affiliation between Alevis and Leftist Politics (1960–1980).” Middle Eastern Studies 55, no. 6 (2019): 932–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Allen. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honwana, Alcinda. Child Soldiers in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kansteiner, Wulf. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies.” History and Theory 41, no. 2 (2002): 179–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karakaya-Stump, Ayfer. “The AKP, Sectarianism, and the Alevis’ Struggle for Equal Rights in Turkey.” National Identities 20, no. 1 (2017): 1–15.Google Scholar
Köse, Talha. “Ideological or Religious? Contending Visions on the Future of Alevi Identity.” Identities 19, no. 5 (2012): 576–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Psychoses. Edited by Miller, Jacques-Alain. York, New and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.Google Scholar
Lüküslü, Demet. “Creating a Pious Generation: Youth and Education Policies of the AKP in Turkey.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 637–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massicard, Elise. The Alevis in Turkey and Europe: Identity and Managing Territorial Diversity. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Pamela. “The Ground of All Making: State Violence, the Family, and Political Activists.” In Violence and Subjectivity, edited by Das, Veena, Kleinman, Arthur, Ramphele, Mamphela, and Reynolds, Pamela, 141–70. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Rose, Jacqueline. States of Fantasy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Barry. Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Shankland, David. The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stavrakakis, Yannis. Lacan and the Political. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Tekdemir, Ömer. “Constructing a Social Space for Alevi Political Identity: Religion, Antagonism and Collective Passion.” National Identities 20, no. 1 (2007): 31–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thiranagama, Sharika. In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tol, Ulaş. “Urban Alevism and the Young Alevis’ Search for Identity.” Istanbul Youth Mapping Series. PODEM and the Berghof Foundation, 2017. http://podem.org.tr/en/researches/urban-alevism-and-the-young-alevis-search-for-identity/.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, Martin. “Kurds, Turks and the Alevi Revival in Turkey.” Middle East Report, no. 200 (1996): 7–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Bruinessen, Martin. Kürtlük, Türklük, Alevilik: Etnik ve Dinsel Kimlik Mücadeleleri, 12th ed. İstanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık, 2016.Google Scholar
Yonucu, Deniz. “Bir Yönetim Biçimi Olarak Mekânsal Ayrıştırma: Tehlikeli Mahalleler, Olağanüstü Hal ve Militarist Sınır Çizimi.” In Yeni İstanbul Çalışmaları: Sınırlar, Mücadeleler, Açılımlar, edited by Candan, Ayfer Bartu and Özbay, Cenk, 91–108. İstanbul: Metis, 2014.Google Scholar
Yonucu, Deniz. “Urban Vigilantism: A Study of Anti-Terror Law, Politics and Policing in Istanbul.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42, no. 3 (2018): 408–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar