AMBIVALENT CITIZENS

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the ambivalent position of Turkish nationalism vis-à-vis the Alevi ethno-religious identity. The Alevi are the largest ethno-religious minority in Turkey. Via a critical pluralist stance, the authors argue that the debates revolving around the origins and nature of the Alevi identity disclose the cultural –and, to a lesser extent, romantic – characteristics of Turkish nationalism and its relative inability to accommodate a fully civic and pluralist notion of national identity. The paper argues that the Alevi question is one of the litmus tests that reveal Turkish nationalism's uneasiness with adopting the idea of an ethno-religiously plural society. Two hegemonic branches of Turkish nationalism conceptualize the Alevi identity through ethno-cultural and religio-cultural lenses. This leads to the Alevi being coded as ‘ambivalent citizens’. This ambivalent status creates a bifurcated yet intertwined process of belonging and non-belonging, authenticity and stigmatization. The paper argues that the unremitting oscillation between the status of ‘genuine self-ness’ and ‘heretical otherness’ discloses the very non-civic and cultural foundations of Turkish nationalism.