Alevi Tarihyazımı Üzerine

Abstract

Alevism studies in Turkey was initiated by orientalists and missionaries in the 19th century. Orientalists and missionaries evaluated Alevis in terms of their similarity with Christians. According to them, Alevis came from Christian origin and became Alevis with various effects in the process. After the orientalists and missionaries, the Second Constitutional Monarchy during Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, one of the intellectuals of the Unionists (the Committee of Union and Progress), built a new paradigm with a Turkist reaction. Köprülü’s paradigm, in a way, pointed to the Turkish origin of the Alevis against the theses of the orientalists and missionaries, distancing them from the claim of Christian origin, and linking the Alevis under the Turkish identity to the Central Asian routes through a line from Hacı Bektaş to Ahmet Yesevi. In the early 1990s, a Kurdish reaction against Köprülü’s Turkist thesis arose. For the first time, Cemşid Bender expressed the thesis that Alevis were actually of Kurdish origin, and claimed that the origin of Alevism should be found in Kurdish civilization. Until the 1990s, or perhaps the 2000s, Alevism studies continued, largely in the form of origin studies. In the 2000s, Alevism researchers expanded the area where the orientalists had determined their lines, tried to ask other questions, point out other sources, and see the issue in a different way. Although this article provides a very brief breakdown of the main sources and main views on Alevi studies since the 19th century, it aims to reveal the main themes of the breakdown and make some suggestions on this field.Keywords: Alevi Historiography, Alevi and Bektashi Historiography, Qizilbash Historiography, Köprülü Paradigm.