6 Alevi Viewership and Transversal Imaginaries

Transversal imaginaries are constructed through the media; however, a mere focus on media content, representations and the perspectives of the media producer is not sufficient for understanding viewers’ imaginaries and their citizenship acts through media. In the case of Alevis, the engagement with Alevi media is defined and sustained by a sense of belonging to a community and by communal ties. Therefore, transversal imaginaries need to be understood through their embeddedness in the history of the community and their collective memories and personal experiences of oppression and discrimination. Alevi viewers follow Alevi media to learn about their culture, history and the contemporary agenda of the community, and regard their media as an alternative source to help find out more about contemporary Turkish politics. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the viewers’ interpretation of their identity, their engagement with Alevi media and the multi-spatial references they use in making sense of their identity, belonging, media engagement and citizenship acts.

In this chapter, I first examine the extent to which Alevi viewers draw on their personal experiences in discussing their engagement with Alevi media and the collective memories of oppression and persecution. I then focus on how viewers learn about Alevism through media, given the lack of reliable sources and the change in Alevi institutions, such as the ocaks, which disrupted the passing down of knowledge of Alevism. I argue that exploring Alevism through media serves as a ground upon which citizenship can be enacted because learning about, and therefore situating, oneself and others is a necessary condition for transversal citizenship. Finally, I investigate how transversal imaginaries are constructed with reference to media and distinguish between how different notions of localities emerge in the accounts of the first and second generations.

Akdemir (2016: 183), who conducted ethnographic research on Alevis in the UK, mentions that the participants provided only a brief account of their migration due to the sensitivity of the issue as some of them had arrived in the UK by illegal means. My experience has been the opposite since the overwhelming majority of my interviewees have elaborated on their life in Turkey, the reasons for their migration, their journey, and their arrival and settlement in the UK. Actually, their migration stories have been a means for them to situate themselves within a collective history of Alevism as they often linked their past to massacres, discrimination and poverty. My insider position as a Kurdish Alevi, and my local knowledge regarding the towns, villages, personalities, lifestyles, tribes and lineages quickly engendered trust and the participants easily opened up about their past and background. Second-generation participants often provided a detailed account of their childhood and how they found out they were ‘migrants’. This has enabled me to address the continuities and divergences between the first-and second-generation’s understanding of Alevism and their engagement with Alevi, Turkish mainstream, UK and other media content.

Poverty is stated as a key reason for migration. Cetin’s (2013) study of suicides among the second-generation Kurdish Alevi community in London highlights economic reasons as encouraging migration to the UK, where the experience of poverty and financial difficulties is related to the socio-cultural marginalisation of Alevis in Turkey. Therefore, poverty must be understood in relation to the social positioning of Alevis as mainly working class or poor urban and rural dwellers. My interviewees understand this relation between their socio-economic position in Turkey and its causes and their hopes for an economically more secure life after migration:

The reason why we came here was economic … Economic reasons and other oppressions … (Hüseyin, 62, male, retired)

The first reason was poverty. Maybe it was political more than economic … We lived under difficult circumstances there [Turkey]. Being Alevi, being Kurdish come on top. How to put it? … It was a crime, a stigma … If you have the label of Kurdish, Alevi, then you are a different citizen. A second-class citizen. (İbrahim, 54, male, coffee-shop owner)

The reason was to make a living … Aleviness … There was oppression. (Hasan, male, 58, retired)

When you are stripped off all your rights, what is the point of living there [in Turkey]?

(Naki, male, 57, unemployed)

The correlation that my interviewees assume between their economic position and ethno-religious identity leads them to value their financial and their children’s educational achievements in the UK. They often portray their settlement in the UK in a positive light in terms of economic advancement, as well as in terms of individual freedom, recognition of their community and their ability to organise in Alevi organisations. Cetin’s (2013) and Akdemir’s (2016) findings also confirm that any discrimination and harassment that Alevis suffer in the UK are seen as individual instances rather than resulting from state policies against Alevis.

Almost all of the first-generation participants situated their background and stories of migration within the context of Alevi history. In these narratives, Alevi history constitutes a combination of uprisings and massacres from the 13th century onwards. Influential religious leaders and bards of the time, such as Hallac-ı Mansur, Nesimi, Baba İshak, Baba İlyas, Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli and Pir Sultan Abdal, are often mentioned in the discussion of different topics, including what Alevism is, why Alevis need their own media, and the persecution and emancipation of the community. As Mustafa, who describes himself a Turcoman Alevi and member of ‘the ’68 generation’,¹ explains:

From Baba İshak, Baba İlyas, Çelebis, Celali uprisings to Atatürk² … I know Atatürk well and I like him very much. Some of us don’t. They like him at the core, but they don’t know him much. We came since Kerbela … We need to develop ourselves. We need to have radios, television stations, organisations …

(Mustafa, male, 67, retired)

These narratives also serve as a background for understanding their views on media, and Alevi television more specifically. According to my interviews, Alevis argue that they are entitled to their own media because Alevism has been under continuous and systematic attack for centuries. Alevi television is one of the means of ensuring that Alevis gain equal status with others. Sakine, who has been a political activist since she arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker and was very active in the London Alevi Cultural Centre and Cemevi, and later in the Federation for ten years, summarises this clearly when she says that ‘television is a weapon of struggle for the community’.

As the previous quotation illustrates, the experience of discrimination also enables the interviewees to situate their private lives as Alevi individuals within the collective history of Alevis and the history of persecution. While discussing first-hand experience of discrimination, the first-generation participants, in particular, interpret their personal experiences in relation to a collective history of persecution and violence. For male interviewees, first-hand experiences of discrimination often took place when they were in the military during conscription (also see Cetin 2013) or at school or work, whereas for female interviewees, it took place locally in small towns and came from neighbours or strangers, who would often harass them because of their clothing or because their hair was not covered.

As I discussed in Chapter 4, massacres also serve as a key reference point for an Alevi collective memory and the formation of Alevi identity. Any form of discrimination, bullying or harassment revives the memory of massacres in individual’s accounts:

They mob you even if you become a teacher or a governor. They don’t let you be. I worked in factory in Maraş for a while. They [my colleagues] kept nagging me ‘why don’t you pray [namaz]? Why, is it a bad thing?’ and I didn’t. They eventually fired me. Maybe I would have been killed if I happened to be at Maraş during the events [massacre].

(Hasan, male, 70, retired)

We haven’t been able to call ourselves Alevi. All the nearby villages knew that we are Alevi, though. We didn’t have anything significant until Maraş [massacre]. Then there was violence in Elbistan. For instance, my dad was walking with his kirve,³ who is a Sunni guy. They ask our kirve, ‘why are you walking with him? Alevis tear the Koran …’.

(Mehmet, male, 59, chef)

During the interviews, massacres were often mentioned either by specifically naming their place and date or by a more general reference to ‘massacres’. The historiography of violence differed from one interviewee to another and there was no singular or coherent narrative of persecution which applied to every viewer. This is not surprising as Alevis do not gain knowledge of massacres through formal education and there is no established canon of Alevi history to be transmitted as studies in this area are still emerging and are not yet consumed by the wider community. Nevertheless, the Dersim (1938), Maraş (1978) and Madımak (1993) massacres were often mentioned and served as a framework for situating personal experiences of symbolic and physical violence and discrimination in terms of these attacks.

Personal narratives of state violence experienced following the 1980 military coup and during the 1990s following the intense armed conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK were also significant for the participants:

If we stayed in the village during the Kenan Evren⁴ period [following the coup] … They took a lot of people from villages and many became paralysed [because of torture]. We did not go back to the village out of fear during that time. They’ve done a lot to Alevis. Many lost their kidneys [because of torture]. Many were also struggling financially back then. Look, it is a good thing that we are abroad now.

(Mustafa, male, 67, retired)

The emancipation of Alevis, Kurdish, Armenian, other minorities in Turkey … Alevi belief requires that we align with the oppressed. The pressures over Kurds, their oppression is ongoing. We’ve seen that women and children were massacred because of their language, their culture. Altogether, with such people, with labourers, we need to unite with those who have been oppressed.

(Hüseyin, male, 62, retired)

In a similar vein, the Armenian Genocide of 1915 has been used as an example to explain the policies and mechanisms employed by the state for othering and then executing members of different communities. For the majority of my interviewees, discrimination and violence against Alevis has a long and intermingled history with the politics of ethnicity, religion and the left in Turkey. As discussed in Chapter 3, Alevi struggle for recognition and claims for the right to be different has led to a demand for equal citizenship and this demand is made on behalf of other oppressed communities as well as Alevis.

It is important to emphasise that none of my participants regard Alevis as powerless victims⁵ within the narratives of violence and discrimination, regardless of their engagement with the Alevi movement as active members or affiliates. On the contrary, the majority of them regard the Alevi history of violence as a common experience shared with other oppressed communities which leads them to redefine Alevism as a political identity and agency:

When Gazi happened … I remember leaving my three-year-old daughter in order to go to the protests. Albeit no one else around me was willing to go, including people from our village, I was so keen to attend.

(Nuray, female, 47, housewife)

Nuray, who has been actively engaged with the London Alevi Cultural Centre and Cemevi in Wood Green, and later with the Federation, for more than eight years, thinks that acting against oppression does not necessarily relate to her privileged position of being settled in the UK or the Alevi movements’ ability to organise abroad. Instead, it is more about individual willingness and motivation and living one’s identity. She emphasised that fear and assimilationist policies were the main reasons why the other people from her village did not attend the Gazi protests, rather than a sense of victimhood. Instead, the emphasis upon the massacres and violence more broadly serves as evidence of the oppression of the community. As discussed in Chapter 4, bearing witness and remembering the massacres of the past is also a reminder of the need for protection from them in the present and the future.

From the viewers’ perspective, Alevi television has been regarded as essential in achieving two main goals: making Alevis visible and getting their voices heard; and reviving Alevi culture, religion and history. In this sense, Alevi television has been given the mission of representing and exploring Alevism. Enforced silence on Alevism and the inability to identify oneself as Alevi beyond the boundaries of the community is a recurrent theme in the interviews. The majority of the first-generation migrants migrated from Turkey at the end of the 1980s, just before the Alevi movement took its transnational turn and began to exert its significant influence upon Turkey. Therefore, the first generation’s past experiences took place at a period where a public declaration of being an Alevi would more likely result in physical harm. However, this does not mean that Alevis are now comfortably able to call themselves Alevi in public. At best, an Alevi’s public self-identification with Alevism is regarded as ‘divisive’ and ‘sectarian’, and could easily lead to discrimination, hate crime or physical violence in Turkey. Therefore, public recognition through television of Alevism matters for many of my interviewees:

At least people heard about Alevism [thanks to television]. Alevism did not even have a name … Have we been able to tell that we are Alevis while going to school?

(Dilek, 57, female, retired)

You weren’t able to call yourself as Alevi in small towns. But now I want to tell everyone who I am.

(Hasan, male, 70, retired)

There was no such thing before, everything was hidden. At least we see it on television. Cems and so on … All was in secret. We see it now on television. It is good. Alevis develop themselves, they know that they are Alevi, they know themselves. We didn’t know ourselves, who we are … Out of fear … We knew it but we couldn’t say it.

(Zeynep, female, 56, housewife)

The presence of Alevi television is a way of coming out of the closet, so to speak, for the viewers, and validates their identity at the public level. While media defines the communal boundaries, it also seeks the attention and recognition of others. According to Zeynep, knowing oneself as Alevi can no longer be sustained within communal boundaries but requires the acknowledgement of outsiders and the acceptance of Alevi identity. Alevi television enables this without putting individual Alevis on the spot. The burden of representation (Tagg 1988) is taken from the shoulders of the individual or particular Alevi communities and is passed onto Alevi television, which does not objectify them with an external gaze:

The reason why Alevis have television is that they haven’t been able to express themselves or they haven’t been able to express themselves as they like. Alevism has been discussed by others, defined by others. Hence Alevis established these channels to express themselves, to define themselves.

(Hasret, 36, male, waiter)

Examining Alevi broadcasting in the 1990s Open Channel in Germany, Kosnick (2007: 108) argues that Alevis mainly aimed to challenge stereotypes, correct the negative images of Alevism that Sunni Muslims and the German majority might have, and mobilise the sympathetic interest of the public. Even though my interviews with television workers did not confirm the persistence of this concern, some viewers seem to adhere to the goal of fixing the problematics of the external gaze through making oneself visible on television. Here one can identify the parallel between the distrust of Sunni Muslims and mainstream Turkish television in depicting Alevism. Alevi protest at the series Red Apple, as discussed in Chapter 4, before it was broadcast can also be regarded as an outcome of this distrust. Arguably, with Alevi television the external gaze is not actively invited to recognise Alevis, as it would by Al-Canlar and other local diaspora broadcasting experiences, which aimed at changing the dominant Sunni Muslim perspective. The external gaze towards the community is rather expected to be able to see and acknowledge Alevi existence in a more subtle but determined way, one aimed at a long-term change. Such determination could be inferred from my interviews with television workers who seemed to remain calm following the closure of their stations and have sought different ways of being on screen again. In other words, neither Alevi televisions nor the viewers expect recognition to be easy or smooth. They regard it as a long process in the struggle for recognition.

It must be noted that the viewers’ expectations from Alevi television are not confined to the politics of representation. The severing of the traditional ties between ocaks, dedes and talips, which also embedded a way of living Alevism, created a sense of loss – in Sökefeld’s (2002a) words, a ‘collective amnesia’. As argued in Chapter 4, Alevi television attempts to fill this gap by bringing the diversity of Alevi communities and events to the screen. As confirmation of this mission, viewers also refer to television as a source of Alevi knowledge and rituals:

I watch Alevi channels and I really like them. They are really good for the Alevi community. It is really good that we don’t lose our tradition. I gained a lot from them. I learned a lot. Yes, we are Alevis but nobody taught us anything [about Alevism]. We learned things [about Alevism] from television.

(Arif, male, 53, off-licence owner)

For instance, TV10 was trying to keep our culture alive. They were passing our culture to new generations.

(Abidin, male, 56, coffee-shop owner)

The desire to know and learn about Alevism also indicates a shift in Alevis’ views as to what Alevism is. Here Alevism is regarded as external to the community, something to be learned and grasped and then applied, rather than a way of living. This view also emerges in the viewers’ approach to Alevi television. The viewers think that Alevis have lost a lot of knowledge about Alevism and its tenets due to oppression; Alevi media provides viewers with sources, more importantly oral and visual sources, through which they can make sense of Alevism and other Alevi communities:

For instance, TV10 has been able to go to every region in Turkey. They have been able to broadcast from different regions. They did very good programmes both visually and research-wise.

(Sakine, female, 47, housewife)

According to Arif, Abidin, Sakine and others, television not only exposes local knowledge and the practices of Alevism, it also reveals them through research. As argued in Chapter 5, Alevi television has equipped itself with an anthropological mission to discover different Alevi communities and broaden their viewers’ conceptions about Alevism, based on first-hand experience. It enables Alevis to imagine themselves as part of a broader entity and that knowledge and communities are out there to be discovered. Through television, Alevis feel themselves to be part of a community whose boundaries are yet to be drawn and which are continuously expanding. In this sense, Alevi media are also given the mission of discovery and exposure which is shared, or maybe even foreseen, by the television workers, as demonstrated in Chapter 5.

The trust invested in Alevi television to pass on Alevi knowledge is striking. With few exceptions, none of my interviewees questioned the reliability of Alevi television in producing knowledge on Alevism. Being an insider media organisation seems to be sufficient in establishing trust between media and viewers. Despite their political distance from Cem TV, for instance, some of the viewers seem to take cem ceremonies broadcast on this channel at face value. Interestingly, the second-generation viewers share this perspective with the first-generation:

Cem TV, Yol TV, I would watch these as well because my dad did. And some others too. Because I feel like they are the most reliable sources to listen to.

(Damla, female, 23, accountant)

Despite their distance from Turkish media, the second-generation also engages with Alevi media with a curiosity and interest in Alevism. In other words, gaining knowledge is a key motivation for the second-generation viewers to watch Alevi television as well. For this reason, Alevi media has a sense of reliability by being an insider’s voice, which also demonstrates that community boundaries matter for making sense of media content, particularly for minorities. It also indicates an essentialist notion of Alevism that the viewers might have about Alevi media – that if it is Alevi, it is trustworthy.

One can argue that the reliability attributed to television stems from ‘media power’ and a trust in media elites who have resources and the socio-cultural capital that ordinary viewers might lack (Ball-Rokeach 1998; Uslaner 1998; Portes 2000; Livingstone and Markham 2008). This might be partially true. However, the participants’ critical perceptions of mainstream Turkish media challenges the notion of media power as respectable. While television is regarded as a reliable source of knowledge on Alevism, mainstream Turkish channels are not deemed trustworthy for gaining an understanding of Turkish society and engaging with the Turkish political agenda. Elsewhere, I argue that Turkish television is the main source for learning about Turkish culture for the second-generation Kurdish Alevis in London and refer to this as ‘mediatised culturalisation’ (Emre Cetin 2020a). Even though Turkish television is not regarded as a reliable source, second-generation interviewees draw on television series and news to make sense of mainstream culture in Turkey, which they would otherwise have no experience of. Alevi television is also a reliable source for making sense of Turkish politics for the majority of my interviewees:

They pass you what happened in the country [Turkey] on a reliable basis. The lickspittle media [mainstream Turkish media] is a lie machine. You can’t find the right way just watching them. No way …

(Abidin, male, 56, coffee-shop owner)

Yol TV was giving news of the oppressed. It was clarifying who was oppressed and who the oppressors were. And these did not please the state, that’s why they closed it. […] Our television did nothing wrong.

(Hasan, male, 70, retired)

I conducted more than half of my interviews in the aftermath of the state of emergency after the attempted coup of 2016, which resulted in a monovocal media environment reinforced by the authoritarian measure of closures. IMC TV and Hayat TV, which were left-leaning alternative channels that were also shut down, are often mentioned as other sources of reliable news and opinion. For the majority of my interviewees, Halk TV remains the only option for following the Turkish political agenda. Alevis’ interest in left-leaning media, such as IMC and Hayat, is in alignment with their preference for positioning themselves in solidarity with other ‘democratic forces’ of Turkey, such as the left or the Kurdish movement, and seeing their emancipation through alliances with them. It also indicates the boundaries of Alevi cultural citizenship, which does not confine itself solely to Alevi identity and politics but more broadly embraces the Turkish political agenda.

In this section, I examine the Alevi viewers’ transversal imaginaries which embed different layers of the local, national, transnational and regional. As argued in Chapter 5, a transversal imaginary helps us to distinguish between these different layers, while also enabling us to address the relationship between them without being limited by the binaries of the home and host countries, or countries of arrival and departure. Also, the Alevi Revival has been mainly understood in terms of temporality, a sort of historical break, which created an emerging unexpected interest in and engagement with Alevism. The spatial dimension of the revival has been examined through a particular focus on transnational social spaces, mainly between Germany and Turkey (Sökefeld 2008a). However, Zırh (2008) emphasises that the Alevi Revival is a multi-sited phenomenon that includes different localities. For my interviewees, village life and past experiences, and first-and second-hand knowledge of it, appear to be prominent in constructing their transversal imaginaries. The village holds a significant value for interviewees, even though not everyone visits their village regularly:

I feel homesick all the time. Missing the homeland … Today I am 70 years old. I visit Turkey and the places of my childhood are different.

(Hasan, male, 70, retired)

Talking about the village is a way of locally and culturally situating themselves for many of my interviewees. For instance, Abidin, who emphasised that the closure of Alevi television is an issue for Turkish democracy, enthusiastically showed me the pictures of his village during the interview. Some interviewees also asked me where I was from and commented on Dersim, which is predominantly populated by Kurdish Alevis, and the villages they visited there and made comparisons between them. Village and regional associations established by Kurdish Alevis are widespread and well attended in London. While drawing the boundaries of different Alevi communities based on place of origin, they also play a significant role in shaping UK Alevi politics and the Federation. They sometimes make decisions about whom to vote for during cemevi or Federation elections, making the associations’ members act as a block vote. They also choose not to hold funerals at the cemevis to challenge the cemevi’s authority if they are not happy with the actions of the community leaders or activists. Sustained and re-constructed ties through village and regional organisations in London which are also closely connected with the Federation indicate the complexities of transversal imaginaries and translocality. For my interviewees, the rural life of the past is also regarded as the source of ‘authentic identity’, ‘true Alevism’ or ‘traditional Alevism’, which are deemed to be fading or already lost. This partially explains the fascination with the village programmes on Alevi television and the channels’ policy of giving voice to rural Alevis (as demonstrated in Chapter 5). For the viewers, village programmes serve as a way of connecting with ‘original’ sources, capturing a vanishing lifestyle.

Villages also serve as a temporal reference point through which the continuity of a sense of belonging and community ties can be sustained. One viewer, Gülizar, started her interview by telling her childhood story of the Maraş massacre. Her statement is very important as we still have only limited knowledge about the massacre and such knowledge is produced thanks to some witness and survivor accounts. Furthermore, her account also reveals the embeddedness of temporality and spatiality in the conception of the village as homeland and Alevis’ inability to regard themselves as ‘Turkish citizens’:

My dad was in Maraş during the events [massacre]; then we went to Germany. We returned back to Turkey; then we came here. We weren’t granted settlement in Germany. […] I was little [at the time of the Maraş massacre]. My [great] uncle’s house was burned down. He was shot, his wife was shot. My dad’s uncle was killed. My dad was held captive. It was really painful. I would never wish it to happen again. Even now, when I visit Maraş I feel eery. You don’t feel comfortable. You feel weird – I don’t know. I went there after 32 years. I didn’t feel like I missed it there. There was nothing. Because you have flashbacks … Yes, maybe I don’t fully remember everything but I felt sour. It felt so difficult. Yes, I have uncles there but I felt sour – I don’t know. Next time I went, we visited the cemevi. I didn’t feel … I don’t know if it was me or else. My parents don’t go to Maraş unless they have to. After the Maraş [massacre], many left the town. My dad went to Germany. Then we had to leave three or four years after him. They [the locals] turned to be our enemy, I don’t know how. The elderly would know better … We haven’t been able to talk about this in the family because my parents would feel so sad. My dad would remember his uncle. My aunt-in-law was shot. [The bullet] hit her through her stomach and came out of her back. And this was done by her neighbour. Other relatives also died. It’s so painful, the Maraş events … My granddad had a gun; that’s why they didn’t come close to us. The military came as well … It’s really difficult to go through those days. I don’t know. Then we moved to another city. But you’re a nomad there because you don’t live in your hometown. You are not comfortable [there] – you don’t have a village or anything. You don’t have your roots. You don’t even have space to bury your dead. Our lot is being buried here and there. We don’t have a place. They sold it at the time – our granddads sold it. They’ve sold it and came to Maraş. They haven’t thought like, maybe our children would come and visit, maybe we have funerals … What can you do now? Nothing … Some of us die in Europe and remain there and some of us in Turkey, in a random place. Our funerals are lost, their places are lost.

(Gülizar, female, 48, housewife)

As her parents were forced to migrate from Maraş following the massacre, for Gülizar migration is strongly associated with a sense of the loss of homeland. Home also means a place where one can be buried and can return to where one belongs. The lack of a space to be buried in Maraş dominates her account of migration. Zırh (2012b: 1759) states that ‘providing proper customary funerals constitute a strong motivation for organizing in the context of migration’ and Alevi organisations employ television broadcasting, among other sources, such as booklets and journals, in their endeavour to revive Alevi mortuary services. Gülizar has been an active member of the Federation by organising events and undertaking different responsibilities within the organisation. Her sensibility about death and funeral confirms Zırh’s point about the significance of funerals and how they facilitate recruitment to Alevi organisations, so that one’s body would not be abandoned. This is also discussed by other interviewees, such as Hüseyin (male, 62, retired): ‘[W]e live as an Alevi when we are alive but we are buried like Sunni when we die.’

In this regard, community ties are sustained through funerals and places of burials. Aleviness transcends the boundaries of life and death: one is Alevi even after death. Gülizar’s concern about the loss of a space in a graveyard and the dispersal of family members’ dead bodies across different places is not only a concern about where bodies are buried, but also a way of mourning. Displacement following the Maraş massacre also has a temporal dimension. It not only indicates the loss of home but the loss of immediate ties to the past and present, and even to an ‘eternal future’ symbolised by death. In this sense, locality, the village in particular, is not only a spatial address, a place of origin, but is also a temporal ‘home’ for one’s communal identity, sustaining connections with one’s ancestors and their past and future.

Where interviewees come from also defines who they are. In other words, locality is a key definer of Kurdish Aleviness. Rather than referring to their country of origin, my interviewees prefer to detail the region and village they come from, as well as their tribe. Ali, who has been engaged with Alevi and village organisations for 20 years, says that:

We all came here as Alevi Kırmanci. Some call it Kurdish … Villages of Gürün, villages of Elbistan … We all belong to same tribe, Sinemilli. People came here and engaged with different political factions, Kurdish, socialist, atheist … But it is clear where we all came from.

(Ali, male, 47, business owner)

As discussed in Chapter 1, Kurdish Aleviness is an ethno-religious identity (Aydın 2018; Cetin, Jenkins and Aydın 2020) and Aleviness is strongly tied to tribes and tribalism, particularly in the case of Kurds (Gezik 2012, 2018). The sense of community, which is defined by ethno-religiosity, is now sustained through these local and contemporaneous transnational connections. Some of my interviewees mentioned that they have relatives and family members abroad, in European countries in particular:

We are seven siblings. Four of us are here, one is in Sweden, one is in Canada, one is in Turkey.

(Ali, male, 47, business owner)

I have three siblings in Germany, one brother in Turkey.

(Abidin, male, 56, coffee-shop owner)

Akdemir (2016: 89) also notes that many of the participants in her research had connections, particularly with Germany, while some preferred the UK over Germany as the final destination. Having relatives and family members across different European countries is a powerful dynamic that reinforces the transversal imaginaries in my interviewees’ accounts. Transnational ties with family members, relatives and acquaintances living in different European countries demonstrate how transversal imaginaries constructed by Alevi media correspond well to the lived experiences of their viewers.

While for the first-generation Alevi, identity and their local origin stand out in defining who they are as a person, the second-generation interviewees fluctuate between different identities and conceptions of citizenship. Unlike the first generation, who associate their Britishness with passive forms of citizenship, such as holding a passport, paying taxes or having access to the National Health Service, all of my second-generation interviewees’ sense of belonging and citizenship are situational as they describe themselves as Alevi, Kurdish or British depending on who is asking and under what circumstances. A designation of Britishness is always accompanied by some sort of origin, either as Alevi or Kurdish or both.

British comes after Kurdish Alevi. I don’t think I ever said to myself, ‘yeah, I’m British’. I say, ‘I’m born and raised here’. But when they ask me, ‘I’m Kurdish Alevi’. I do say, ‘I am British’; it is always my nationality I say is British. My ethnicity always is Kurdish Alevi. It just depends what they are asking me. There is a difference, yeah.

(Damla, female, 23, accountant)

If somebody asks me, [I would say] I am Alevi. To be honest, I would say it but I don’t know much about it. Like I can’t explain it to anybody. Alevism is this, Alevism is that … But this is where I see myself as. Alevi community is so huge. They are not all so … Yes, they are everywhere but only a minority are putting their voice out. They are visible but people overlook.

(Ela, female, 22, undergraduate student)

While talking about her visits to Turkey, which includes visiting her grandparents in their village, family members in Istanbul and holiday destinations such as Antalya and Bodrum, 29-year-old Sevil says that she feels she is:

an outsider, as a complete outsider. I don’t feel like a foreigner there in the same way that I don’t feel like a foreigner in here. But an outsider….

(Sevil, female, 29, political adviser)

Göner (2017a) argues that Kurdish Alevis are constructed as outsiders within the Turkish nationalist imagination and this position is adopted by the community members themselves who have not been able to associate themselves with the ‘ideal citizenship’ of the Turkish Republic. Interestingly, this perspective applies to the second-generation interviewees despite the fact that their experience in Turkey is limited to short visits:

I can’t really openly say I am Kurdish; I am Alevi in Turkey. Kurds have always been humiliated; Alevis’ houses were demolished. Lots of things happened. People probably are still in fear [in Turkey] but when we were there … For instance, when we were there NMP [Nationalist Movement Party]⁶ had a demonstration … Shall we speak in Turkish or in English? … We didn’t know what to do. We know what to do here when there is a demonstration but you feel a bit lost in Turkey as there are always things happening. Well, as I said, we had to walk through the crowd to get to our hotel. We were really afraid. We stayed silent. We thought to get a taxi but even if we did, the traffic wasn’t moving. We spoke quietly amongst ourselves. We spoke English. I think we pretended to be English. We didn’t know how to act.

(Özlem, female, 23, undergraduate student)

Özlem and her three other cousins feel safer pretending to be English in the face of a nationalist demonstration in Turkey, given that it would be difficult to infer their identity from their looks. In this account, an ordinary tourist’s visit to a seaside town becomes a challenge for the second-generation. Akın, whose parents migrated to the UK when he was four, also tells how he quickly becomes friends with Kurdish waiters in the luxurious hotels where he stays and this makes him feel settled. Despite having no first-hand life experience of Turkey, the second-generation carry a strong sense of being outsiders, which is probably reinforced further by migration to the UK as they do not know how to protect themselves in risky environments in Turkey.

Alevi television is able to facilitate generational affinities among Alevis living in different places by being a common cultural reference point. It enables younger generations to make sense of and connect with the Alevi cultural identity of previous generations:

My parents watch it because it’s their channel, their people’s channel. The talks there or the music they play, it’s the music they would sing. It’s what they want to watch. They want to watch their own people. I don’t know what it is but maybe just to see their own people. My mum, she loves it. For instance, my mum says that my granddad used to attend cems. They have an ocak. Always cem … My grandad used to go to cem every week and my mum saw him going. They also watch Alevi TV. When I go to my granddad’s, they also watch the same channels. It is not a habit, I think. It is the thing that they grew up with. When I go at my granddad’s, I watch Cem TV and Yol TV. I think it is mainly kind of influence as well. If you see them watching it, you want to watch it as well. They even get the pleasure of seeing their own people there. They enjoy watching their own [culture], for instance … When they did music videos, we had someone from our village playing. I often see him on TV. When I see him, I would love it. He is on TV, I even watched it yesterday. It is nice.

(Damla, female, 23, accountant)

Damla’s statement is important in terms of addressing the significance of affect in engaging with Alevi television, which indicates that struggle for recognition is also about the politics of affect. Seeing one’s identity and culture on television is not solely about making oneself visible or getting the message across or fighting against prejudice. It is also about the pleasures of consuming cultural artefacts and feeling a sense of validation by seeing oneself on screen.

The sense of validation created by the community constructed through television is addressed as a source of pleasure. Listening to Alevi songs, deyiş and gülbang is also mentioned by Abidin, İmam, İbrahim and others as a source of pleasure and a way of living one’s identity through television. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Alevi radio stations were very influential during the 1990s in Turkey and Alevi music served almost as an implicit signifier of Aleviness and an accepted, ‘risk free’, form of cultural expression, unlike Kurdish music, which had led to fines being imposed by the Radio Television Supreme Council on the radio stations that played them. Examining how the Kurdish audience engage with Turkish nationalist fictional programmes, I (Emre Cetin 2015) found out that the viewers prefer misrepresentation to being invisible and think that it is better to be depicted as ‘villain guerrillas’ than not to be represented at all. No doubt, everyday cultural signifiers such as clothing and music are able to facilitate viewing pleasures stemming from cultural identities. More importantly, however, the ability to consume the same cultural content in a village in Turkey and in London or elsewhere is able to generate transversal imaginaries that cut across different spatialities. By showing dedes visiting their talips based in a village as well as in London, Alevi television, I argue, introduces a similar sense of connectivity and continuity among community members across familial relationships and beyond. Damla identifies a generational continuity between herself, her mother and grandfather in relating to Alevi rituals and practices, in both face-to-face (cems) and mediated (television) forms. It is also important to note that the local has an exceptional space in the transversal imaginary. To put it plainly, transversal imaginaries are mainly sustained through local ties and connections which are strongly situated within the national and transnational.

Significantly, despite occasionally visiting their parents’ villages, the second-generation’s conception of the local has nothing to do with village or small towns in Turkey, which are mainly places of departure for their parents. When asked about local programmes on television, they mentioned a show broadcast on a mainstream Turkish channel which is available on Turksat and aimed at Turkish migrants living in Europe:

I have actually been on them. I’ve actually been on Londra Mahallesi [‘Neighbourhood of London’]. It was on 2012. I was working at a solicitor’s firm; I was a training solicitor. It was broadcast on the day when my grandparents came here to visit us from village in Turkey. We watched it together at my uncle’s. It’s even on YouTube now.

(Akın, male, 35, solicitor)

There is this programme, Londra Mahallesi, I watch it every once in a while. They repeat it at night. If I see it, I watch it, but I wouldn’t specifically go and say ‘let me watch Londra Mahallesi’. I do like to see what is going on, what they do talk about. I find it quite entertaining actually. Maybe because it is on Turkish TV, it attracts my attention. I’m like, ‘London’s on Turkish TV, we see these people.’ I feel some sort of affinity. That’s why I watch it.

(Ela, female, 22, undergraduate student)

Transversal imaginaries are constructed differently for the first and second generation, based on their transnational ties and conceptions of locality. While the village or area defined by tribal ties are more significant for the first generation, the second-generation viewers tend to relate to London or to even more specific areas of the city, such as Enfield or Hackney. Instead, villages and localities in Turkey are experienced through affinity and social relations carried on in London rather than relating to physical space. In other words, villages are still lived by the first generation through their social life with other village members in the UK and though their regular visits to the villages in Turkey, whereas villages are mainly ‘experienced’ by the second generation through social circles in the UK as they rarely visit villages. The first generation’s past and sense of belonging to Kurdish Aleviness through village life is carried on in Alevi television through village programmes, which are rarely consumed by the second-generation viewers. This indicates the divergences in imaginary of different generations and re-addresses transversal imaginary as translocal.

So far, I have demonstrated the extent to which transversal citizenship draws on ethno-religious identity formation. However, transversal imaginaries and acts of citizenship have not been sustainable because of the unstable political climate in Turkey. They have been disrupted due to the closure of television channels following the attempted coup in 2016. In the following chapter, I focus on the closure of Alevi media and discuss its implications for transversal citizenship.