Martin Soekefeld. Struggling for Recognition: The
Alevi Movement in Germany and in Transnational
Space. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008. x + 291 pp.
$85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84545-478-4.

Reviewed by Jennifer A. Miller (Department of
Historical Studies, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
Published on H-German (September, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

Recognizing the Politics of Migration in German Studies

Central questions in German studies have long
revolved around questions of where the nation's
borders lie and definitions of German
citizenship. One of the problems with studying
minority groups in Germany, therefore, is
avoiding models that essentialize and hem groups
into inescapable, monolithic categories. In the
case of Turks in postwar Germany, minority
communities within Germany have become one
homogeneous group in the press, in the popular
vernacular, and even in scholarship. This
attitude is reflected in designations like
"foreigner" (Ausländer) or "Turk," with one word
standing in generally to describe more complex
configurations. In contrast to the leveling
influence of this discourse, Martin Soekefeld’s
book provides an important and nuanced study of
one particular group, the Alevi, and in so doing
creates space for broader and more careful
considerations of different minority communities
within Germany. Soekefeld's book does not offer a
definition of what Alevis are and where they fit
in, but rather, as he states, "a refusal to do
so" (p. 4). The difficulty of both defining and
acknowledging Alevis within the various
intersecting Turkish communities of Germany is
the driving force behind this book--an exercise
that provides an important lesson for minority
studies within and beyond German studies.

The text centers on the movement for the
"recognition" of "Alevi identity" in both Germany
and Turkey that began in the late 1980s. As a
part of the larger Turkish immigrant population
in Germany, Alevis have struggled in the diaspora
to maintain control of the unique Alevi identity
in a country that barely allows for one
(fictionally) homogeneous Turkish (Sunni)
identity. Scholars and politicians have defined
the Alevi in multiple ways. A religious and/or
cultural minority community within Turkey, they
are estimated to number in the tens of millions.
Alevis make up an estimated 10 percent of the
Turkish population in Germany.[1] As Soekefeld
explains, some scholars consider Alevism a sect
of Islam that is most notably not Sunni (in
contrast to the majority of Turks), while others
consider Alevism a way of life, defined by
cultural and traditional characteristics.[2] To
be Alevi among Sunni Turks in Turkey is one
thing; to be Alevi among Turkish migrants to
Germany, another. Yet, the two groups are bound
together in the transnational space that is the focus of this monograph.

Conducted over a period of almost seven years,
Soekefeld’s social anthropological ethnography of
Alevis in Hamburg uses interviews and
questionnaires as well as participant observation
and sources created by the Alevi to discuss a
group of people who have been both migrants and
minorities throughout their history. The Alevi
have consistently provided a backdrop against
which majority populations can define who they
are by pointing out their differences. Therefore,
Soekefeld’s discussion of "Alevi politics of
identity, within the debate on recognition" (p.
2) offers much more than a study of migration or
diaspora in Germany. It rather describes an
exercise in the politics and policing of identity
formation, including a discussion of what is at
stake in each process. Soekefeld’s main interests
lie in the group's transition from a private,
concealed group identity to that of a public
community and the leadership role played by Alevi
"community associations" in this transition.

Through six chapters, Soekefeld builds his
argument that the different constellations of
Alevi identity complicate their recognition. He
positions the Alevi as participants in a social
movement; in a religious movement; in a turf war
among competing Alevi associations in Hamburg; in
rituals and commemorative events; as a diaspora;
as part of the larger context of migrants and
minorities in Germany; and, finally, as part of
the broader transnational Alevi movement that
extends beyond national borders. Soekefeld’s
overarching thesis is that questions of identity
for any group are necessarily intertwined with
questions of politics, so that "the concept of
identity entails a dialogic relationship because
identity calls for recognition" (p. 253). Public
recognition is as essential to a group's identity
as self-recognition, especially in countries such
as Germany and Turkey, which define homogeneity
as part of their national consciousness. The
struggle for recognition then becomes a fight
against essentialism on the one hand and a bid
for political agency as a collective, unified
identity on the other. This paradox of
identity-related conflicts in both Germany and
Turkey provides the central framework of an "Alevi movement."

Soekefeld argues that an Alevi identity arose out
of the postwar discourse on Alevis--a discourse
that occurred, inter alia, in multicultural
centers in cities such as Hamburg as well as
within identity-related conflicts on the national
level in Germany and Turkey. When Alevi
associations, especially those in Germany, claim
to represent the Alevi community, Soekefeld
argues, they evoke and create the very community
they seek to represent: "Alevi associations
embody the movement also in their often
competitive and conflicting relationships, which
in part point towards competing conceptions of Alevi identity" (p. 255).

In chapter 5, which is particularly strong,
Soekefeld makes the argument that Alevis are
unified by a "politics of memory" or "collective
memory" based on attacks against them in Turkey
(for example, in Mara [1978], in Çorum [1980],
and in Sivas [1933]). Drawing on the literature
of collective memory, Soekefeld points out that
"activists of the Alevi Movement" conceived of
the attack at Sivas as an event that targeted the
entire community (p. 121). Soekefeld views the
Sivas massacre as emblematic of the struggles
faced by Alevis, an event that underlined the
necessity of a separate political movement. In
this vein, commemorative events in Germany that
are organized, publicized, and sponsored by Alevi
associations serve the dual purposes of
establishing and solidifying a historical
continuity of Alevi experience and of
representing the Alevi as a unique community to the German public.

Alevis also present themselves to the German
public as different from Sunni Turks by pointing
out that they share a "liberal lifestyle" with
members of German culture--as seen in the example
of Alevi women, who do not wear headscarves.
Soekefeld points out that Alevis are in many ways
more "compatible" with Germans than typical
Sunnis: "Alevis position themselves firmly on the
side of modernity, that is on the German side of
the divide" (p. 185). Even when Alevis hold
German citizenship, Soekefeld points out, public
discourse continues to categorize them as
foreign. Thus, the German public and the context
of migration in Germany also provide an important
backdrop for the construction of Alevi identity
in transnational space. Turkey and Germany both
make a nationalistic demand for homogeneity and
integration among their populations that minority
groups challenge. Difficulty in categorizing
Alevis makes their membership in both of these
states even more precarious. Soekefeld’s choice
of the gerund for the title underlines that
identity is an ongoing, complicated process
rather than a fixed status. For this reason, this
study is useful not only for what it illuminates
about minorities within contemporary Germany, but
also for what it tells us about Germany today.

Notes

[1]. Kerstin E. Fineklstein, Eingewandert:
Deutschlands "Parallelgesellschaften" (Bonn:
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2009), 96.

[2]. See the essays in Tod Olsson, Elisabeth
oezdalga, and Catharina Raudvere, eds., Alevi
Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social
Perspectives (Istanbul: Numune Matbaas , 1998).

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