Challenging the master narrative of modern Turkey. Alevi life experiences of religious and political engagement.

This project is an ethnographical study of Alevi life experiences from the perspective of religious and political engagement in Turkey.

Constituting approximately 15-20 percent of the population, this non-recognised religious minority has been engaged in identity politics since the end of the 1980s and worked for recognition, visibility and minority rights in Turkey.

The history of modern Turkey is often narrated in terms of a repeated and continuous struggle between a secularist state and a religious, inherently rural, population. This master narrative omits the experiences of minority communities.

Based on the recording of Alevi life stories and family histories, this project seeks to provide new ways of understanding the history of religious and political contentions in modern Turkey.

With families of an exposed minority constituting the ethnographic material for analysis, this project enables critical engagement with the master narrative from a number of perspectives of minority communities, including family, gender and generation.