Media, Religion, Citizenship : Transnational Alevi Media and Its Audience

Abstract

This book is about Alevi media and the ways in which it has generated a particular form of citizenship that I call transversal citizenship. Alevis have been struggling for the right of recognition and equal citizenship in Turkey for decades. Despite this political struggle and its acknowledgement in the field of Alevi studies, their rights claims, with a few exceptions, have not been considered as acts of citizenship. Instead, their demands for equal citizenship have been situated within the framework of ‘identity politics’ in the post-Cold War context usually with pejorative undertones. This book examines the contemporary Alevi movement through theory of citizenship enactment and argues that Alevi media paves the way for transversal imaginaries and rights claims that embed different spatial levels into Alevi politics. In this book I also argue that in order to unpack the socio-political dynamics of Alevi media we must adopt a community-centred approach and make sense of Alevis’ boundary-making practices, political divisions and ethnic diversity. The book contributes to the decolonising of media studies by offering a critical perspective on community media and the decolonising of Alevi studies by critically examining some key postulates and unquestioned assumptions about the Alevi community which have been highly influenced by Turkish nationalism.