Theatre and Solidarity among the Transnational Alevi Community: Memory, trauma and political economy

Abstract

The Alevi religious minority makes up the largest religious minority in Turkey, and their history of persecution dates back before the Republic of Turkey. The inception of the Republic of Turkey as a secular nation-state in 1923 was initially promising for the Alevis, but the regime remained implicitly Sunni Muslim. So, the community’s experiences of citizenship and belonging continued to be characterized by precarity as they occupied a category of national objection. Beginning in the 1960s, the waves of migration from rural areas to urban Turkey and Western Europe gradually transformed the experiences of the Alevi community and they became more visible. With migration, Alevi people’s everyday experiences of oppression and discrimination as well as their need for community-building and solidarity intensified. In Europe, the Alevi diaspora was too often categorized simply as Turkish or Muslim immigrants. Many of them wanted to differentiate themselves from the Sunni Muslim Turkish majority in the diaspora and gain recognition as a distinct group. They organized in their new homelands and established formal and informal networks of transnational solidarity. In the formation and sustenance of these networks and solidarity, theatre has played a crucial role. The plays staged by Alevi community theatres and professional groups in Turkey and its diasporas have focused primarily on the histories of violence and persecution against Alevis. As such, theatre functions as a site for the constitution of public memory and the intergenerational transfer and transformation of trauma and serves the affective politics of community-building and solidarity among the transnational Alevi community. The political economy of these performances is a crucial element of the politics of solidarity, contributing to the sustenance of Alevi cultural producers and their communities.