Re-Imagining Identity: The Transformation of the Alevi Semah

Abstract Until the early 1990s, the Alevi community, a heterodox Islamic sect in Turkey, actively avoided explaining their beliefs to outsiders and were against permitting non-Alevis to enter their cem rituals. By the mid-1990s they began to hold their rituals publicly in the cemevi (lit. cem house) in Turkish cities and in their cultural centres in the diaspora. Almost all Alevi associations or the cemevis in the diaspora and ‘at home' have a semah group educated and organized by the executive. As opposed to rural/traditional cem rituals in which everybody may take part in the dance, the semahs performed in the urban cems are carried out by the semah groups consisting of young men and women. Moreover, these semah groups also perform in the non-ritual context. Thus, if the predominance of semah within the Alevi cem ritual is a ‘fact' to be studied, then differences in their present interpretations in Turkish cities and in the diaspora is another. This article examines these differences in the context of the transformation of the semah from the representation of religious identity to that of ethno-political identity. Notes 1. R. Çamuroğlu, ‘Alevi Revivalism in Turkey’, in T.Olson, E. Özdalga and C. Raundvere (eds.), Alevi Identity (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1988), p.83. 2. M. Van Bruinessen, ‘Kurds, Turks and the Alevi Revival in Turkey’, Middle East Report, Vol.26, No.3 (1996), pp.7–10. 3. A. Erol, ‘Reconstructing Cultural Identity in the Diaspora: Musical Practices of the Toronto Alevi Community’, in U. Hemetek and H. Sağlam (eds.), Music from Turkey in the Diaspora (Vienna: Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie, 2008), p.151. 4. Music is forbidden according to the teaching of the Shii schools at Kerbela and Nejef and other such places of higher learning. Although the Alevis have many doctrines and much history in common with the Shiis of Iran, the Alevi use of music and dance in worship is one of the aspects of Alevi-Bektashi faith that has caused the Iranian Shiis to label them as ‘heterodox’. For a more detailed analysis, see G. Clarke, ‘Mysticism and Music’, Folklor/Edebiyat, Vol.21, No.1 (2000), pp.59–74. 5. Hacı Bektaş was no theologian. He had not studied in the Medrese as did Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, who was his contemporary. He was a mystic, born among the people and he remained close to the people. Though he was a Muslim, he did not give up the ancient practices and customs of Central Asia. 6. I. Melikoff, ‘Bektashi/Kızılbaş: Historical Bipartition and Its Consequences’, in T. Olson, E. Özdalga and C. Raundvere (eds.), Alevi Identity (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1988), p.6. 7. D. Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular İslamic Tradition (London and New York: Routledge/Curzon, 2003), p.171. 8. A.Y. Ocak, Alevi ve Bektaşi İnançlarının İslam Öncesi Temelleri (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2003), p.55. 9. R. Çamuroğlu, ‘Some Notes on the Contemporary Process of Restructuring Alevilik in Turkey’, in Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi et al. (eds.), Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East (Lieden: Brill and New York: Köln, 1998), p.25. 10. K. Vorhoff, ‘Academic and Journalistic Publications on the Alevi and Bektashi of Turkey’, in T. Olson, E. Özdalga and C. Raundvere, (eds.), Alevi Identity (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1988), p.27. 11. A. Erol, ‘Marketing the Alevi Musical Revival’, paper presented at the Conference on Contemporary Muslim Consumer Cultures – an Emerging Field of Study, 24–27 Sept. 2008, Institute for Islamic Studies, Free University of Berlin. 12. Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey, p.19. 13. Erol, ‘Reconstructing Cultural Identity in the Diaspora’, p.152. 14. A. Erol, ‘Change and Continuity in Alevi Musical Identity’, in R. Statelova et al. (eds.), The Human World and Musical Diversity (Sofia:Bulgarian Musicology Studies, 2008), p.109. 15. Erol, ‘Reconstructing Cultural Identity in the Diaspora’, p.156. 16. For a more detailed analysis, see Erol, ‘Change and Continuity in Alevi Musical Identity’. 17. A. Özturkmen, ‘Staging a Ritual Dance out of its Context: The Role of an Individual Artist in Transforming the Alevi Semah’, Asian Folklore Studies, Vol.64 (2005), p.250. 18. Ibid., p.251. 19. Melikoff, ‘Bektashi/Kızılbaş: Historical Bipartition and Its Consequences’, p.2. 20. For the genre of the semah, see F. Bozkurt, Semahlar (Istanbul:Cem Yayınevi, 1990). 21. I. Markoff, ‘Alevi Identity and Expressive Culture’, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol.6 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p.795. 22. For the regional differences of semahs in Anatolia, see N.A. Onatça, Alevi-Bektaşi Külküründe Kırklar Semahı (Istanbul: Baglam Yayınları, 2007). 23. F. Dinçer, ‘Alevi Semahs in Historical Perspective’, Folklora Dogru, Special Edition (2000), p.34. 24. Özturkmen, ‘Staging a Ritual Dance out of its Context’, p.248. 25. H.L. Kreiser, ‘The Alevis's Albivalent Encounter with Modernity’, paper presented at the Conference on Anthropology, Archaeology and Heritage in the Balkans and Aatolia, 3–6 Nov. 2001, University of Wales. 26. Vorhoff, ‘Academic and Journalistic Publications on the Alevi and Bektashi of Turkey’, p.37. 27. A. Özturkmen, ‘Staging a Ritual Dance out of its Context’, p.249. 28. B. Fliche, ‘The Hemşehrilik and the Village: The Stakes of an Association of Former Villagers in Ankara’, European Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol.2, No.2 (2005), http://www.ejts.org/document385.html 29. Through the story of an individual folk artist, Durmuş Genç, who singled out the dance aspect (namely the semah) of the Alevi cem ritual, Öztürkmen (‘Staging a Ritual Dance out of its Context’) shows the exchange between Durmuş Genç and the members of a University Folklore Club in the 1970s led the Alevi semahs to be staged for the first time by non-Alevi performers, and as part of a ‘Turkish folk dance’ repertoire. 30. For the idea of ‘Yol bir Sürek Binbir’ (there is one path but many ways) in Alevi belief and culture, see Erol, ‘Reconstructing Cultural Identity in the Diaspora’, pp.151–62. 31. Ibid., p.158. 32. M. Sökefeld, ‘Religion or Culture? Concepts of Identity in the Alevi Diaspora’, paper presented at the conference on Locality, Identity, Diaspora, 10–13 Feb. 2000, University of Hamburg. 33. L. Neyzi, ‘Embodied Elders: Space and Subjectivity in the Music of Metin-Kahraman’, Middle Eastern Studies,Vol.38. No.1 (2002), p.97. 34. The term Türkü refers to any piece of Turkish Folk Music, also indicates its anonymity. Türkü Bar is a kind of pub. Of the most important aspects of the revival Türkü Bars began to emerge in the 1990s. Although the customers of these venues are not restricted to Alevis the vast majority of the regular visitors are young Alevis. 35. Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey, p.142. 36. T. Turino, ‘Introduction: Identity and the Arts in Diaspora Communities’, in T. Turino and J. Lea (eds.), Identity and the Arts in Diaspora Communities (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2004), p.9.