The “other” of Sunni orthodoxy: Islamists’ perception of Alevi
ERTUĞRUL MEŞE - BARIŞ CELEP
While those who define themselves as founder, essence and dominant of society constitute the “me”, those who remain outside the “me” constitute the “other”. This discriminating attitude is logic of politics of exclusion, which in its aggressive form proposes rejection of “other” and constantly emphasizes the difference between self and the other, and contains its maintenance by removal, exclusion or, in the extreme case, destruction of other. The culture individuals live in leads to them to develop the habit of viewing the other as bad, ill-disposed or barbarians and seeing themselves humans, good people or perfect. This attitude is based on psychological, cultural, and religious grounds because it stems from each-group’s tendency to re-define itself and the other. Thus, the understanding of the other is shaped by the thought about boundaries of relations between common “us” and the “other”, historical experiences and national practices. The Alevi perception among Islamists is also nourished by these grounds. The aim of this article is to reveal Alevi perception in Islamist ideology in 1945-1970. Sunnism, which defines itself as those who adhere to the tradition of the Prophet, is set of religious faiths with religious and political imagination that proposes submission to the religious-based oligarchic authority in response to the caliphate and power/authority problem in Islam. Sunnism, which bases itself mostly on anti-Shia, is the common religious interpretation in Turkey. So, Islamism, a political ideology, has been constructed as an ideology that centered on the Sunni orthodox interpretation of Islam. While this ideology was constructing itself, it made Alevism the “other” by constantly keeping in circulation the negative perception of “Kizilbash” that had existed in society since the Ottoman Empire. Because Alevism approved modernization efforts in the Republican period and had close relationship with leftist ideology after 1960’s these practices of marginalization were committed by Islamist intellectuals. Islamist intellectuals not only produced Islamist activities, but also strengthened the existing perception by constructing discourses that revealed the anti-Alevi sentiment that shaped their mentality. When the literature is evaluated, it is noticed that the anti-Alevi discourse produced by Islamists has a content aims the politics of marginalization. According to some texts in the literature, even the existence of a belief called Alevism and people with this belief was rejected, and Alevis were stigmatized in texts by moral and religious vocabulary. For that purpose, historical method and discourse analysis method were used in this article. This study utilizes mainly literature produced by the Naqshbandi sect, which was influential in the Ottoman Empire and shaped the Islamist ideology, and by the Islamic intellectuals of the Republican period who were affiliated with this sect.
Keywords: Sunnism, orthodoxy, Islamism, other, Alevi perception, stigmatization, exclusion.
Reading the post-colonial in the Kurdish novel: Anti-colonial dialogues, postcolonial subjectivities, melancholic acts, modernist forms
AHMET ATAŞ
Although the Kurdish and the postcolonial novel are both sets of texts characterized by similar critical perspectives in relation to their literary concerns, fields of interests, potentials of resistance and cultural visions, the political iterations of the Kurdish novelistic corpus has not yet adequately been explored in the light of postcolonial approaches. Attempting to broach the legacies of political and cultural domination engaged by Kurdish novelists and the literary forms they deploy to this end, this study offers a methodological reading of the postcolonial underpinnings of the Kurdish novel. Through a critical reading of a selection of early and modern texts from Kurdish literature, the study aims to contextualize the postcolonial imaginings of Kurdish novel around topics such as the divided homeland under political dominance, legacies of colonial domination, national resistance struggles and postcolonial subjectivities. To this end, firstly, a brief overview of relevant postcolonial approaches is presented and attention is drawn to the possibilities the field offers to Kurdish literary criticism in understanding the postcolonial features of Kurdish novels. Secondly, through a critical reading of the texts, the study attempts to demonstrate the continuity of postcolonial themes in the Kurdish novelistic corpus and highlights the changes in the way these issues are addressed in modern Kurdish novels. Based on its findings, the study highlights three conclusions. First, preoccupation with the political and cultural legacies of colonial domination and articulations of postcolonial subjectivities are hallmarks of Kurdish novels; second, while modern Kurdish novelists continue postcolonial dialogues with their predecessors through continued interest in certain topics, they also produce newer and more in-depth forms of postcolonial subjectivities; third, widely investing in allegories of loss and melancholy, modern Kurdish novelists, on the one hand, attempt to convey the legacies of colonial domination through motifs of the grief of loss, while offering authentic psychoanalytic insights on issues such as loss, mourning and melancholy on the other.
Keywords: Kurdish novel, post-colonialism, post-colonial literatures, national imaginaries, iterations of resistance, allegories of loss, melancholy symbologies, modernist forms.
Pensioners, laborers and the AKP: Vote shifts in the 2023-2024 elections
EROL TAYMAZ
The presidential and parliamentary elections were held on May 14, 2023, after the Kahramanmaraş earthquake under conditions of high inflation. It was expected that laborers and pensioners, whose income levels had fallen considerably under high inflation, would punish the ruling parties, especially the AKP, but the election results were a disappointment for the opposition. The March 31, 2024 local elections were held with this disappointment, but this time the opposition had an unexpected success. We study how voter behavior changed between 2023 and 2024 with respect to the preferences of voters who voted for the AKP in 2023. By using provincial level data, we examine the impact of pensioners and laborers on the change in the voting behavior of AKP supporters. According to the estimation results, contrary to expectations, there is a negative relationship between the share of pensioners and workers in the population and the rate at which AKP voters would leave the AKP in the 2024 election. Our analysis suggests that the dynamics at the provincial level are unique and may deserve a comprehensive analysis.
Keywords: Voting behavior, ecological inference, 2024 Local Elections in Turkey.
A different look at the 2023 and 2024 elections: Preferences of different administrative regions and income groups
ANIL İSMET AŞÇI - EKİN BAL
General and local elections, voters’ behavior, and the effects of election results have always been a matter of debate in Turkey. The 2023 general and 2024 local elections have also been widely discussed in this context. Considering that some of the analyses carried out so far have various shortcomings, it is crucial to analyze the changes in the election preferences of different groups. For this reason, in this study, the 2023 and 2024 elections will be evaluated according to different administrative regions and income groups in the context of the political economy conjuncture that has been developing since 2018, and various results will be revealed.
Keywords: 2023 General Elections, 2024 Local Elections, income groups, administrative regions, voter behavior.
