Excerpt from Ioannis N. Grigoriadis “Turkish Political Culture and Minorities”,paper presented at Nationalism, Society and Culture in post-Ottoman South East Europe workshop at St Peter’s College, Oxford, 29-30 May 2004.
The importance of studying political sub-cultures becomes evident in the case of Turkey. Despite long, systematic efforts to forge a unitary Turkish national identity, Turkey’s population is still characterised by considerable ethnic and religious diversity. A study of Turkish political culture cannot, therefore, be rendered complete, unless it accounts for the political sub-cultures of Turkey’s minority groups. Turkey’s Kurds, Alevis and other minor Muslim and non-Muslim minority groups continue to claim a separate identity, which does not necessarily conflict with Turkish national identity or adopts an inimical approach toward the Turkish state. While the quest for a Kurdish identity resulted in insurgency and terrorism in the late 20th century, these acts were by no means representative of the whole Kurdish identity movement and did not significantly impact the stance of other minority groups. Due to their different historical and social backgrounds, Turkey’s minority groups differed in the way they attempted to define their role inside the Turkish society and negotiate their recognition by the Turkish state.
…
Tribalism and marginalisation have been the most important determinates in the formation of Kurdish political sub-culture. While tribalism allowed for the survival of strong parochial elements in Kurdish civic sub-culture, political and social marginalisation of Turkey’s Kurds facilitated the adoption of an adversarial approach toward the Turkish state. The rise of civil society movements since the 1960s has allowed for the articulation of Kurdish political sub-culture, while urbanisation has contributed in the alleviation of its diverging points.
…
Alevi political sub-culture was formed under the influence of a long resistance tradition, peripherisation and identification with the modernisation campaign of the Kemalist elite. Alevis have historically been suspected by the Ottoman Empire for their religious links with the Shiite Persian Empire. Persecutions were not uncommon, and their frequency increased for the additional reason that the Ottoman Empire started adopting a more explicitly Sunni Islamic character. Like Ottoman Kurds, Ottoman Alevis were influenced by Ottoman parochial political culture. Yet their long-standing struggle against Ottoman state religious persecution policies resulted in the instillation of antiauthoritarian elements that complemented their established parochial political sub-culture.
…
Atatürk’s modernisation campaign was seen as liberating Alevis from centuries of Sunni oppression and was, therefore, fully supported, despite Alevi Islam was also among the victims of Atatürk’s militant secularisation campaign. Alevis considered the secular Turkish republic to be much more tolerant toward them than the Islamic Ottoman Empire and identified with the programme and aims of its Kemalist elite. State-sponsored subject political culture was, therefore, often well-accepted, and the convergence of Alevi political sub-culture with the dominant one was remarkable. Yet the Alevi revival of the 1960s showed that despite being closer to the dominant Turkish political culture paradigm that Kurdish political sub-culture, Alevi political sub-culture retained a considerable degree of independence and originality (Küçük, 2000: 189-92).
Also read Grigoriadis’s article published in Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 23-41.