The Alevi Workshops Report

The final report on the Alevi opening, which the government conceived as a link in its democratic opening program, has at last been announced. More than a year had passed since the last of the Alevi Workshops, launched by State Minister Faruk Çelik in June 2009 and run under the coordination of the esteemed scholar and thinker Dr. Necdet Subaşı. Because of the delay in the report, criticisms filled with accusations of "stalling," "fiasco," "deception" and "assimilation" aimed at the opening program came from time to time from Alevi associations. Not that these criticisms had refrained from being made even during the workshops, which were intended to determine the road map and horizon of the opening.

It was often asked what need there was to hold so many workshops and drag the matter out so long in order to make some arrangements deemed necessary regarding the Alevis. After all, what needed to be done was clear anyway. The demands were clear, the rights were clear, and these workshops, organized to grant those rights, would at best serve only to stall the Alevis and to manipulate and disregard their demands.

Yet first of all, it was seen thanks to these very workshops that identifying certain problems and moving toward their resolution by way of workshops could make an important contribution to Turkish political life and to the culture of democracy.

Second, if the matter at hand is a movement such as Alevism, which has gone through processes such as intensive urbanization, modernization and secularization in the last fifty years, if there is an extremely great diversity and dispersion among the leadership cadres representing it, and if these processes of change have created serious uncertainty and dispute about the nature of Alevism, then it cannot be anyone's place to say that the Alevis' demands are very clear.

Just as the Sunni segment, which sings praises on behalf of the Alevis from the outside, cannot determine the Alevis' demands unilaterally, it was likewise unacceptable for people speaking on behalf of a certain segment of the Alevis to put themselves in the place of all Alevis and impose demands. Therefore it was not possible to take the demands of a loud-voiced Alevi segment as the demands of all Alevis; this would first of all have been a great injustice to the other Alevi groups too. Because some Alevi groups have a demand such as considering Alevism outside Islam, and their other demands can be in line with this general strategy. If you take this as a basis and the requested arrangements are made, it may become inevitable that Alevism be defined as a separate religion, in a way that many Alevis would never want. The workshops therefore also served to find an optimum point by seeing the differences among the demands.

Meanwhile, a determination was formed to take immediate steps on matters understood to be truly the demand of all Alevis or of the overwhelming majority of Alevis.

Third, the haste to end discussions in favor of one's own limited view is the typical attitude of those who want to present themselves as representatives of more of the population than they are, in all political debates, and this attitude can lead to dangerous results in negotiations. Moreover, a democratic negotiation environment not only enables the determination of the limits of rights in the universal sense, but also prepares the parties for changing the accustomed order of relations in social structures.

From the statements made by State Minister Faruk Çelik we also learn that some steps regarding the Alevi opening had already been taken without being announced. The steps concerning Madımak were taken as a matter of agreement, without waiting for the report to be concluded. On the compulsory religion courses too, a certain stage has already been reached, with the content of the courses being reorganized to treat Alevism in the way the Alevis want.

We know that some Alevis themselves have objections to the official granting of the status of place of worship to cemevis. For example, it is impossible to ignore the warnings of Yalçın Özdemir, General Editorial Director of SU TV, on this matter. Truly, whoever wants to count somewhere as a place of worship can count it, should be able to, and does not need anyone's approval for it. But the concern that the "official recognition" of the status of "place of worship" could serve to treat Alevism as outside Islam, in a way that equates it with Christianity and Judaism, cannot be ignored either. Moreover, one must not be in a search such as having anyone counted as a Muslim by force. Everyone also has the right not to want to be a Muslim.

By contrast, if there is, as it appears, a demand such as having cemevis benefit from certain material advantages that mosques enjoy, the Alevis, as equal citizens who pay taxes, have a right to this, and a status in this scope must be recognized. The report also announces an arrangement within this framework.

In fact, as with the Kurdish question, in the Alevi matter too, thanks to a paradigm change that has occurred in the system, a radical distance has been covered toward the solution of the problem. At the level of this new paradigm, in which recognition rather than denial is at issue, there remains no reason for the problems not to be solved. What remains is the continuation of good faith and a sincere negotiating environment.