Does drawing a salary make one the "grandfather of the state"?

In the 85-year history of the Republic, we are perhaps for the first time on the threshold of a process in which the Alevis are officially addressed and recognized with an official status by the state. It is understood that the work being carried out under the coordination of State Minister M. Sait Yazıcıoğlu has reached a certain maturity.

I do not think that the content of the package of opening that Yazıcıoğlu is trying to mature on behalf of the government is very important at this stage. Before the content of the package has emerged in full clarity, in my view one should neither rejoice too much nor criticize too much. What should really be valued is that this package is open to a process of consultation made up of the natural representatives of the Alevi communities and will take shape over time. This will also reduce as far as possible the likelihood of an imposition on the Alevis from outside, by the government or the state, or by the Sunnis in a way some Alevis might perceive.

When these conditions of the process are met, the Alevis will perhaps for the first time have to produce a decision among themselves, or at the minimum a common opinion that represents everyone. Let us admit that the encounters, talks and dialogues that were never taken seriously have until now not served to force the formation of a common representation or opinion body for the Alevis. This dispersion of the Alevis has also constituted the most important excuse standing in the way of the recognition of the Alevis' rights and status.

When things became serious, the Alevis began to produce more realistic considerations among themselves. When every demand voiced is addressed with the intention or reality of a solution, that is, handled within the normal course of politics, it begins to reach its realistic limits as well. A more down-to-earth horizon opens in this matter, in which the limits of the solution are seen in place of rhetoric. For example, the debates carried out in the last few days by the Alevi dedes themselves over the demand, expressed until now on behalf of many Alevi organizations, that "cem houses be recognized as houses of worship and that the officials there be put on a salary" are very instructive in this respect.

While many demand that Alevi dedes be put on a salary, and while there are proposals in this direction in the government's draft package, one Alevi dede speaking at the dedes' consultation meeting expressed his concerns by saying "a dede who gets a salary from the state becomes the state's dede, and this serves to domesticate Alevism."

This reaction, which is understood to be accepted by an important segment of the Alevis, cannot be called unjustified in a sense. However, this "dede-state-salary" relationship, whose drawbacks have been noticed once it became a real possibility, is a criticism that will also lead the Alevis to reconsider the criticisms they have directed at the Diyanet until now. If giving a salary to a religious official makes him belong to the state and turns him into an agent of assimilation, then it may be concluded that the imams who have received salaries through the Diyanet up to now, as "state imams," have as their whole purpose assimilating Sunnism. Indeed, the criticisms directed at the Diyanet by the Islamic segments up to now have also always been that the Diyanet is an institution that represents the state in the world of devout people, rather than representing devout (or, in this context, Sunni) people.

In essence, in the early period of the Republic, the Diyanet aimed not at a mission such as strengthening Sunnism or serving Sunnis, but at controlling the world of religion on behalf of the state and preventing devout people from organizing around religion in this field. Both because of the sociological nature of the matter and as a result of the working of democratic processes, after a while the Diyanet did not fit into the mission of being an institution representing only the state, and in practice settled into a position of organic intermediary between the state and the devout. This position has now taken it very far from being an institution that could be abolished by simply saying "let's abolish it."

Today, although an idea such as "abolishing the Diyanet and handing religious affairs over to the communities" sounds pleasant, carrying it out is not at all easy because of this sociological nature of the matter. Mosque imams can no longer be regarded as "the state's imams" simply because they receive a salary from the state. On the contrary, the imams' worlds of meaning and belief coincide more with the people's demands. Moreover, because of the democratic process that works for better or worse, Turkish citizens are themselves also the owners of the state, because of the taxes they pay, the responsibilities they bear, and the citizenship position they hold as a result.

The distance assumed in such relationships between the state and the citizen will (I hope) increasingly come to seem anachronistic, just like the state-dede relationship expressed in the approach of some Alevi dedes to a dede who receives a salary. In this discourse, a problem is very conspicuous: the state is perceived as if it were a foreign (assimilating, destructive, occupying) power, and is never seen as a contract held in common.

Yet, in terms of the discourse or level of democracy we have reached, this kind of distance between the state and the citizen now needs to be overcome.

An Alevi, who is a citizen as much as anyone else because of the taxes he pays and the responsibilities he bears in the defense of the country, also has the right to receive religious service in accordance with his own belief.

Putting the representatives who are selected through their own natural processes on a salary can of course be debated in view of certain other drawbacks or by questioning alternative ways, but it is quite possibly a way.