Identity among Turkish Shi’is: An Ethnographic Study

Abstract

This article examines the cultural identity of Turkish Shi’is in a border province in East Turkey and how their ethnic and religious identities are positioned within the political and cultural context of Turkey. Shi’is living in Igdir, the easternmost province of Turkey, may share the ethnicity of the majority in Turkey, but they are in the minority in terms of their religious identity. Their cultural identity is shifting contextually and is always under construction. In this context, cultural theorist Stuart Hall explains identity as a never-ending construction, a process never completed—always in progress. This paper traces the multilayered and interdisciplinary approach of Hall’s identity interpretations and applies them to discuss the social, cultural, and political positionings of Igdir Ja’faris in Turkey. The study uses ethnographic data based on field observation and semi-structured interviews with Turkish Ja’faris in Igdir.

1. Introduction

Igdir province, with Armenia in the north, Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in the east, and Iran in the south, is a border city in the easternmost part of Turkey. This region, where different cultures and nations have historically lived together, maintains this feature today. The local population of the city consists of Turks, most of whom are of Azeri origin, and Kurds.

Considering Turkey’s sociopolitical dynamics, it may be possible to make some inferences about the cultural and political structure of the city at first. According to this inference, because of their ethnic identity, Kurds would be restless residents of the city and Azeri Turks would be natural members of the state. However, this is not exactly the case for the city of Igdir. Turkey, which was built as a nation-state, has had a fragile relationship with different ethnic origins throughout its hundred-year history. It is possible to see different manifestations of this fragility in this city. Azeri Turks in Igdir have the founding ethnic identity of the state, but have a religious belief which differs from the majority because they are Ja’faris.

Ja’farism, also called Isnaashariyya, Imamiyya1, and Shi’ism2, expresses adherence to the path of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq. However, while this school is mostly known by the name of Ja’farism in Turkey, it has become famous with the names of Shi’ism in countries where Ahl al-Bayt (People of the Prophet’s House) friends share the same faith.3 Although the Ja’faris living in Igdir share this common faith, their Turkish identity makes their story worth examining in a different sociocultural context. In this regard, this study is an attempt to explain the social, cultural, and historical contexts that shape the cultural identities of Turkish Ja’faris living in Igdir. Referring to the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s definition of cultural identity as a never-ending construction, the first aim of this study is to try to understand the sociocultural dynamics of the identity construction processes of the Turkish Ja’faris living in Igdir. The second aim is to trace how Turkish Ja’faris position themselves in Turkey’s general sociopolitical and cultural context.

The article consists of four sections. In the first section, the methodology, the data collection process, the criteria for the interviews, and the resources to collect the data are explained. In the second part, the Shi’i concepts that are thought to be relevant for the content of the study are explained and a brief information about the history of Shi’ism is given. Following this, the article tries to explain what Turkish identity means to the Ja’faris, how they view the Ottomans, and how the Ja’faris historically and culturally position themselves within the history of the Turks. The transnational relationship between Turkish Ja’faris and Iranian Twelver Shi’a Muslims is also outlined in this section. The historical, cultural, and religious connections of Turkish Ja’faris with Iran, the largest Shi’i country in the Muslim world, are also discussed in this context. In the fourth section, the article discusses what Atatürk, the founding leader of the Turkish Republic, means to the Ja’faris and how the love of Atatürk has a function in the construction of their religious and cultural identities. The views and reactions of the Ja’faris towards the laic practices of the state (along with the Sunni reflexes of the latter), their perceptions regarding state-run Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), and the issue of representation are analyzed in this section.

2. Methodology and Data Sources

Based on field observation and interview methods, this ethnographic study was conducted between 2020 and 2022. Since the starting point of the study was an effort to understand how the Ja’faris living in Igdir defined themselves and which identities they adopted, many references were made to how the interviewees expressed themselves and how they approached the researched topics. The fact that the studies about the Ja’faris are mostly about their faith, my involvement in daily life in the city where I work as an academic and the multicultural structure of the city encouraged me to do this study.

The ethnographic approach of the study and its emphasis on interviews may have some methodological dangers. Hammersley states that “the shortness of contemporary field works can encourage a rather ahistorical perspective” (Hammersley 2006, p. 5), and that what the researcher observes may not always be typically there and may vary. However, the fact that I have done this study in the city I currently live in, that the interval of fieldwork is extended over a long period of time, and that the questions asked in the interviews are on topics such as historical and cultural identity help to eliminate these dangers. Wolcott characterizes the researcher’s role as an “integral part of reporting qualitative work” (Wolcott 2009, p. 17) and he underlines the necessity of writing descriptive accounts in the first person. In particular, I tried to use the first person when describing my fieldwork and recounting my experiences in the interviews as a non-Ja’fari researcher as the visibility of the researcher helps the reader recognize “the critical nature of the observer role and the influence of his or her subjective assessments in qualitative work” (Wolcott 2009, p. 17).

As in a typical semi-structured interview, a list of questions and topics to be covered was prepared, but there was a “flexibility in how and when the questions are put and how the interviewees can respond” (Edwards and Holland 2013, p. 29). At the beginning of many interviews, I felt that the participants approached me with uneasiness because I am not a Ja’fari. However, when they felt that my main purpose was not to discuss their beliefs, but that I was interested primarily in their cultural identity and that it was for serious study, many of the issues I wanted to talk about were discussed without prompting questions. The duration of the interviews ranged greatly, from 45 min to almost two hours.

After the content of the study was presented in detail, ethics committee approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Igdır University. In accordance with the ethical rules, participants were asked to sign release forms which added a formal tone to the interview. As a consequence, however, almost every participant was uncomfortable. For that reason, many interviews were unusable. Only about one-third of the interviews were audio recorded as many participants refused requests to be recorded; however, most of the interviews were written down verbatim. Participants who did not emphasize their Ja’fari identity did not object to being recorded. As I had been warned that Ja’faris might object to being recorded, I was prepared for this possibility before the interviewing began.

I interviewed 28 people for this study. It was a struggle to find female participants, but with the help of interviewees and students who had grown up in this city, eventually I found seven women to interview. Two of the women were housewives, two were teachers, one was a university student, and two were private sector employees. The interviewees came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The interviews I benefited the most from were the interviews I had with teachers. In addition, the interviews I conducted with people who lived outside the city for a while and then returned to Igdir were rich in content. Some of the interviewees were not religious, and these interviews were especially useful in terms of looking at the Ja’fari society from the outside. I had the opportunity to meet with five mullahs4 for the study. These interviews were quite similar in content. Most of the interviews were held in the city’s local cafes. I carried out eight interviews at Ja’fari mosques and associations. Four interviews were conducted with home visits.

Interviewees ranged in age from 19 to 65. All interviews were conducted in Turkish and transcripts were translated by me into English for the study. The interviews were recorded or written down verbatim, but there were sections that I also edited. In some interviews, I had to remove some parts that were irrelevant. After transcribing the data, I extracted the repetitions and tried to make connections to find the relevancy between the interviews. Specifically, I gathered dialogues on belonging, culture, rituals, Iranian influence, identity, Turkish identity, and Shia identity into clusters.

The first meetings were with people who approached Ja’farism with a critical attitude, not by conscious choice but because the contact person who set up my initial meetings introduced me to people who were not in the religious circle of the Ja’faris. The first mullah I interviewed helped me a lot and introduced me to many religious Ja’faris. I talked to people from his social circle for a while. Meeting with the opinion leaders of the Ja’fari community in the city added to my credibility.

3. Some Related Concepts of Shi’ism

Since this study is not a detailed examination of the belief principles of Shi’ism, a selective approach is more applicable here. The concepts mentioned during the interviews and the ones that are considered important in order to understand the culture of the Ja’faris living in Igdir will be briefly mentioned. Considering the ethnographic feature of the study, these concepts will be given together with field observations.

Ahl al-Bayt: The term Ahl al-Bayt means people of the house. In Islamic literature, it is used for the family of the Prophet. It is an important concept not only for Shi’is but also for Sunnis, but what distinguishes these two groups in the context of this concept is not the honor it brings but for Shi’is, as Sharon explains, “it represented a major component in the fight for power and leadership in Islam and highly important element in the search for the legitimacy of rule” (Sharon 1986, p. 169).

When I visited the Ja’fari mosques in Igdir, I saw portraits of the Ahl al-Bayt, especially the Prophet’s son-in-law and cousin Ali, and his son, Hussein. In the commemoration ceremonies held in the city, women wore ribbons with the inscription of Zeynep, the Prophet’s granddaughter and Ali’s daughter, and Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, and Ali’s wife. In certain parts of the city, special importance was given to the Ahl al-Bayt and his family through displays of pennants with the words “Ya Imam-i Hussein” and portraits of Ahl al-Bayt. Moreover, during the interviews, when asked about their beliefs, most of the interviewees emphasized their love for Ahl al-Bayt.

The Imamate: Throughout my study, I interviewed mullahs and religious leaders in the city. As someone who does not come from the Shi’i tradition, I had difficulty determining their role in the community. In other parts of Turkey, in Sunni cities, imams who are in charge of mosques have neither influence outside the mosque nor a leadership role in their community. This is a radical difference from the roles of the mullahs, the imams of the Ja’fari mosques. In order to understand the importance of the mullahs, who take a leading role in religious and social issues, it is necessary to investigate the Imamiyya doctrine in Shi’ism.

Most Shi’is believe in the guidance of the twelve imams as the heirs of the Prophet and they believe that with the death of the Prophet, “the function of guiding man and preserving and explaining the Divine Law continued through the line of Imams” (Momen 1985, p. 147). All of the imams must come from the household (blood) of the Prophet. Shi’ism, which supports this doctrine with verses from the Qur’an, the words of the Prophet and the expressions narrated from the Imams, differs from the majority of Muslims in this regard. Although the main point of the Shi’ism and Sunnism debates is the leadership fight after the death of the Prophet, Shi’is state that Shi’ism is a sect that existed while the Prophet was still alive. According to Nevbahti, a 9th-century Shi’i scholar, Shia was the name of the sect formed by those who were known as the supporters of Ali during the time of the Prophet and who claimed his imamate after him, and many of the Prophet’s leading companions were included in this sect (Nevbahtî 1355).5

The first Imam was Ali bin Ebu Talib and the eleventh Imam was Hasan al-Askari (d. 874). After the death of Hasan al-Askari, “theology of occultation was developed, which aimed at removing chiliastic aspirations by delaying the return of the Mahdi6 to an indefinite future date” (Kohlberg 2003, p. XXVIII).

In the Ja’fari mosques in Igdir, it is possible to encounter diagrams that show the twelve imams in the form of a family tree. While the date of death of each imam is given there, there is a question mark next to the twelfth imam, Imam Mehdi. According to Shi’i belief—Twelver theologians to be exact—“this Hidden Imam has not been seen in the world since 941” but “he remains alive and will ultimately return as the Mahdi, the one guided by God” (Pinault 1992, p. 6). The existence and necessity of a leader figure was evident in the mosque and during the interviews, I asked questions about the reverence of the Hidden Imam. In general, the responses indicated that religion cannot be lived without allegiance to an imam, a leader, and a mujtahid.

Mujtahid (authorized interpreter of Islamic Law): Mujtahid is an Islamic scholar; “a title for the most learned jurists in Shi’i jurisprudence” (Dabashi 2011, p. 334). Those who have trainings and skills are allowed to practice ijtihad (juridical opinion) and those who do not have those qualifications are required to follow a mujtahid. When I asked the participants, whom I believed to have knowledge about Ja’farism, about these characteristics, I received answers such as “years of training, dedication, some innate characteristics and getting permission from the boards”. Mujtahids are mostly men who, with some exceptions, live in Iran.

Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989), the founder of Islamic Republic of Iran and the religious leader of 1979 Iranian Revolution, defines mujtahids as those “who are able to distinguish the narration of the Most Noble Messenger in accordance with the true ordinances of Islam” (Khomeini 2017, p. 63). He states that they are the successors of the Prophet with the criteria they inherited from the imams, and they have the duty to guide people in Islamic science.

Hierarchically, mujtahids are at the top with local mullahs serving below them. The mullahs I interviewed in Igdir communicate with these mujtahids as they are “the main means of spreading public recognition of a mujtahid’s piety and learning as the common people are not considered (able) to discern such things” (Momen 1985, p. 205). Local mullahs also need the approval of a mujtahid and his personal status to strengthen their own legitimacy where they live.

The majority of mujtahids live in Iran and Iraq. As a rule, Shi’is must “affiliate themselves with local or regional mujtahids” (Halm 1997, p. 106). It is believed that “they are the ones able to assess all different aspects and implications of a ruling and to deduce the true ordinances of Islam” (Khomeini 2017, p. 63) Almost all of the religious Ja’faris stated that they were affiliated with a mujtahid in Iran. Among the interviewees were those who frequently went to Iran and visited their mujtahids.7 I asked a question in all the interviews about the bond to mujtahids because I thought that such a commitment might play a role in cultural identity.

Taqiyyah (Dissimulation): According to Shi’i belief one has permission “to conceal one’s religious identity and even deny one’s faith in circumstances where there is persecution or a threat to life or property” (Momen 2015, p. 358). It may be necessary to take into account the current interpretations of this concept when examining Shi’i Turks living in a predominantly Sunni country. In the preliminary interviews I conducted before starting the fieldwork, some people warned me that taqiyyah could be an obstacle for me and that as a non-Shi’i researcher, I might not get the required answers for my study. However, when I started the interviews, it did not take long for me to realize that these prejudices were unfounded. For, as the Shi’i religious scholar Tabatabai states, taqiyyah “is permitted if there is definite danger facing one’s own life or the possibility of the loss of the honor and virtue of one’s wife or of other female members of the family…” (Tabatabi 1979, p. 199). In addition, since the Shi’is are in the majority in the city of Igdir, there is no circumstance that requires the practice of taqiyyah.

The Month of Muharram (Ashura): The death of Imam-i Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, “has traditionally been seen by Muslims of all persuasions as perhaps the greatest single calamity that befell the community in its early history” (Crow 2016, p. 41). Majlisi, a seventeenth-century Shi’i scholar, also associates this death with the oppression of the followers of Ali after the death of the Prophet and states that this event prevented the correct introduction of Islam to the world (Majlisī 1983). Therefore, the death of Imam-i Hussein in 680 is one of the most important starting points of the Shi’i belief and in the month of Muharram according to the Hijri calendar, Shi’is all over the world commemorate the martyrdom of Imam-i Hussein in Karbala with various rituals and ceremonies. Igdir is one of the central places of these ceremonies in Turkey. The population of the city increases in Muharram because people come from many different places to watch and participate in these ceremonies. In Muharram, the city is the embodiment of a mourning culture. People wear black-colored dresses, all entertainment activities and celebrations are suspended, and workplaces are closed on busy days of commemoration.

These mourning ceremonies are an important part of the city’s culture and Ja’fari of all ages, even small children, participate in these intense ceremonies. Rituals include the reading of elegies and poems, cursing the oppressors, and praying to the martyrs of Karbala. While remembering the Muharram ceremonies he attended in his childhood, Dabashi expresses this intensity of emotion as follows: “Shi’ism is a poem, an elegy, a eulogy, an epic, a panegyric pausing for a moment for history to recollect itself and start anew” (Dabashi 2011, p. XII).

4. Turkish Identity as a Compensator of Being the Other

When the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, it inherited a youthful nationalism that emerged in the late stages of the multinational empire. As stated by Uzer “Ottoman past, Islam, and Westernization … were major points of reference in the makeup of Turkish national identity” (Uzer 2016, pp. 4–5). Nationalism, which was implemented as a state policy in the early years of the Republic was based on an imaginary Turkish race and “the cleansing of Islamic elements in the culture was called “science”, and a secularism loaded with a high dose of anti-religion is applied (Karpat 2009, p. 49). After the 1950s, along with nationalism, Islam began to emerge as an identity again, especially in the political arena. Turkish–Islamic Synthesis became one of the main discourses of nationalist and conservative parties. In this context, it is worth mentioning that Islam in Turkey has a Sunni character with references to the Ottoman Empire. It would not be easy for the Ja’faris to find a place in this synthesis. Although Turkish identities brought them politically closer to this field, the blending of this identity with Islam did not appeal to them completely.

Considering the ups and downs of the Shi’i Turks’ relationship with the Sunni Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman past is not always a source of a mighty identity for the Ja’faris. During the interviews, I occasionally encountered critical comments about the Ottomans. While some of these criticisms were quite harsh, there were also those who said that they were their ancestors and that they respected them. However, if we consider that the Ottomans were positioned as the Other in the history of Shi’ism, it would not be difficult to make sense of this confusion for the Turkish Ja’faris.

In the 16th and 18th centuries, the Safavid Dynasty ruled in Iran. It is not possible for the Safavids to be called the state of a single ethnic element because there were Turks among the founding elements of the state and “in the sixteenth century Azerbaijani Turkish was spoken in areas where now it is not anymore” (Floor and Javadi 2013, p. 570).8 Also in Anatolia, which was the Ottoman land, there were many supporters among the Turks. In addition, the Ottoman Empire, located to the west of the Safavid lands, was their greatest threat. Some scholars attribute the strength of Shi’ism in the region as a reaction to the rise of the Ottoman Empire as an invading power. Ottoman threat “seems to have made the imposition of a distinctive official religion somewhat more palatable to Iranians” (Nasr et al. 1988, p. 284). Safavid rule, by accepting the Shi’ism as the official religion, “had the effect of isolating Iran both culturally and in religion from the rest of the Muslim world” (Rahman 1966, p. 7). Igdir Ja’faris, who are at the intersection of the Turkey and Iran, still carry this tension in different ways. A twenty-seven-year-old journalism graduate Ja’fari brought up this historical situation in my questions about cultural belonging:

Ö: Let’s look at the Safavid period. For example, Tahmasb9, son of Shah Ismail.10 Were it not for their mistakes, we would be part of the Safavid state today. There has been silence for years. There is alienation. You can see this in America, of course for the Blacks. Now they have to live by the rules of the Whites. Or let’s look at Algeria. French culture dominates. The oppressed retreated to their own regions.

While talking about the troubles experienced by the Ja’faris, the Ottomans were accepted as a milestone and a historical framework was drawn up to the present day. A Ja’fari philosophy teacher, takes an indecisive attitude while describing this situation with the Ottoman Empire. He does not neglect to add exceptions to his speech, which he started with “We love the Ottomans. Of course, we should not forget what Yavuz11 did. He committed atrocities in the wars with Shah Ismail. I mean, the troubles we experienced actually started from those times.”

The Ottoman past, which is one of the biggest references of Turkish nationalism, has different meanings for the Ja’faris compared to the nationalist groups in Turkey. Some religious Ja’faris, who also embrace their Turkish identity, prefer not to see the Ottoman Empire as a part of their ethnic identity. An interview I had with a retired civil servant in his sixties was mostly about the belief system of Ja’farism. In part of his interview, in which he constantly referred to historical events, he explained his ideas to me on the subject without being asked any questions about the Ottoman Empire: “For example, our Turkishness has nothing to do with the Ottomans. We acknowledge all Turkish history. We accept the whole picture. Our claim to Turkishness is also related to the Ottomans.”

This situation may be different for those Azeri Turks who push their Shi’i identity into the background. Some interviewees, who described themselves as nationalists, refused to talk about it by simply saying that Ottomans were their ancestors. Some said that the Ottomans had made some mistakes, but they still identified with them because they were important in Turkish history. It should be noted, however, that this important element of Turkish nationalism has different meanings for the Ja’faris living in Igdir.

The Turkish identity, which is an important part of the cultural identity among the Igdir Ja’faris, is not abandoned or abolished, although they are religiously different from the majority. By fulfilling the requirements of their own identity, it is differentiated by decentering features and by reconceptualization. The Ja’faris’ ignoring or reshaping of the Ottoman past according to their own cultural or religious identities means they are formulating a Turkish identity, in Hall’s words, “in its new, displaced or decentered position within the paradigm” (Hall and Du Gay 1996, p. 2).

5. A Shi’i City under the Ataturk Silhouette

Ataturk led the War of Independence after the First World War and afterwards became the founding leader of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. On his way to building a modern nation-state, he abolished the institution of the caliphate and repudiated Ottomans by launching Western social and cultural reforms in the cities that “would redefine the empire as a compact territorial political community aligned with the ethnic nation of Anatolian Turks” (Smith 1991, p. 104).

I was quite surprised12 to see a portrait of Ataturk in the first Ja’fari mosque that I visited in the city. I was used to seeing the picture of the founding leader, the symbol of secularism, in Alevi places of worship (cemevi), but I had never seen it in a mosque before. After a while, I realized that these portraits are not only a part of official institutions but also a part of daily life. If there was a picture of Ataturk in a shop I entered, it was a clue that it was most probably an Azeri shop. In my first interviews, I did not ask any questions about Ataturk but when I realized that this issue was brought up without my asking, it became one of the main questions.

Even the most devout Ja’faris answered my questions about Ataturk honestly. This was one of the subjects in which they felt most comfortable. It is possible to categorize the reasons underlying this devotion into several groups. First of all, Ataturk is seen as a symbol of Turkishness and as a savior of the nation. A twenty-three-year-old woman working in a telecommunication company used very clear expressions when I asked her why Ataturk’s portrait was found in mosques: “Very simple. He is our Father. It is thanks to him that we exist today.” A former professional football player, who is now a hairdresser in his thirties, said, “Nobody loves Ataturk more than us but it’s different. It doesn’t look like Izmir, Antalya or Istanbul.” A sociology teacher in his forties connected his love for Ataturk with his Ja’fari identity as well as with his Turkish identity:

I’m a devout Shi’I living in Igdir but I put Ataturk on a pedestal. In Anatolia, there is sectarianism among Sunnis. We don’t have it. We do not take kindly to the issue of sects. We are grateful to Ataturk for closing the sects and zawiyas. He built a nation-state from its ashes by putting laicism at the center. This is so important for us. We can easily say our prayers in our Shi’i mosques. We can commemorate Hussein’s passing by mourning with thousands of people. And we say that it is good that Ataturk existed. Ataturk put this laicism in the center and built a system that is equidistant for everyone.

A civil servant in his fifties, who expressed throughout the entire interview that the Ja’faris were very uncomfortable being seen as the Other, explained this love in a similar way. On the day of the interview, a popular Sunni preacher had been on social media talking about the Ja’faris and the interviewee was quite angry. When I asked about Ataturk, he replied with references to this preacher:

Sevgi: I see that there is a very special love of Ataturk in the city. He is everywhere to be found, even in mosques.

E: There are two reasons for this love of Ataturk. Firstly, we see him as our savior. Secondly, if the Republic of Turkey were not secular, the Sunnis would strangle us. Look, you saw what the man said, not everyone, of course. Shi’is are infidels, hang them, etc. So, we have a mosque. Our mullahs and scholars are doing their duties here without fear. What gives us this opportunity? The Secular Republic. Thanks to this foundation, we can sit here and talk about issues with a Sunni brother. We take comfort from laicism and identify it with Ataturk.

The AKP (Justice and Development Party), Ich has been the ruling party in Turkey since 2002, has gained the support of Sunni religious groups by highlighting the despotic practices that laicism claims to have established on Muslims. Kaya states that “laicism was always regarded and represented by pro-Islamist political parties, including AKP, as anti-Islam and anti-religion” (Kaya 2015, p. 9). Some elites in Turkey supported the AKP’s anti-laic approaches, thinking that it could create a secular society by securing religious freedom (Kuru 2009; Yavuz 2009). Others claim that the Republic established by Atatürk supported Sunni Islam and that Sunni Islam was prioritized with the establishment of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in 1925 (Türkmen 2009; Hanioglu 2012; Pinar 2013). Ja’faris also think that the Directorate of Religious Affairs is an institution that exists to institutionalize Sunnism. In particular, the issue that the imams (mullahs) of the Ja’fari mosques should be appointed as civil servants, like the imams of the Sunni mosques, stays up-to-date13. While some supported the appointment of imams to Ja’fari mosques by this institution, some opposed it, thinking that this would cause the state to interfere with them.14

The fact that the Directorate of Religious Affairs was established by Atatürk does not constitute an obstacle to the love of the Ja’faris for Atatürk and he maintains his immunity. A pastry seller, who hung pictures of Hussein and Ataturk on the walls of his shop, said that for some old Ja’fari people, Ataturk was ranked right after the Prophet.15 While some of the devout Sunni religious groups in Turkey are uncomfortable with Ataturk’s distance from religion, the Ja’faris consider this distance as an advantage for them. The establishment of a laic state after the Sunni Ottoman Empire increases the importance of Ataturk for Shi’is.16 Ataturk’s reforms almost become the guarantee of Shi’ism. They think that their being seen as the Other, as a minority sect and the troubles they may experience because of their beliefs can be prevented by the presence of the founding leader. When they identify with Ataturk, they can both emphasize their Turkish identity and take cover against some Sunni religious groups that try to marginalize them.

Hall emphasizes the necessity to “situate the debates about identity within all those historically specific developments and practices which have disturbed the relatively settled character of many populations and culture” (Hall and Du Gay 1996, p. 4). In this context, it will not be enough to explain the relationship of the Ja’faris with Ataturk without considering it from a historical perspective. In the final analysis, identities are, as Hall said, about ‘questions of using the resources of history’. Due to the tensions with Sunnis since the Ottoman period, claiming a non-religious figure with almost religious references shows the ties of the identity with the past in a different way.

6. Conclusions

The thing that impressed me the most during the interviews was the constant use of historical references while talking about the identities of the participants. Almost every participant knew where their forefather had come from and described in detail the events that were decisive for Shi’ism in the history of Islam. “The pull of the past as continuity and tradition, as ‘our ancestors’, is strong” (Hobsbawm 1972, p. 14) among Ja’faris in Igdir. Both this historical discourse that Shi’ism conveys to the members of the sect that it established by taking the important events in Islamic history as reference, and the reflex of keeping the past constantly alive in the geography where they are positioned as the Other ensures that history is a living element for the Ja’faris and is still speaking to them. However, it is not a simple, unadulterated past, since their relation to it “like the child’s relation to the mother, is always- already ‘after the break’” (Hall 1990, p. 226). When using this Freudian reference of Hall for the Ja’faris, it is not possible to attribute this break to a specific historical phenomenon like colonialism. However, we can consider the establishment of the secular Turkish Republic after the Sunni Ottoman Empire as one of these breaks. The transition from an empire, to which they did not feel a sense of belonging, to a secular state in which the Turkish identity came to the fore, led to the reconstruction of their cultural identity. Established, traditional Shi’i culture became unstable or patchworked within the discourse of Turkish identity and the identity emerges as a positioning, not an essence. Blessing the secular structure of the state in order to live comfortably with the Ja’fari identity and emphasizing the Turkish identity against being stigmatized as the Other is an indicator of the positioning of their cultural identity.

The Shi’i culture, which is reflected in the daily life of the city and is constantly produced with rituals, the Turkish culture, which is also kept alive with rituals and old customs shows us a static cultural identity image. When we go deeper, we move away from our superficial, static understanding of identity towards a more dynamic and alive identification as a process. Ja’fari identification, in this sense, is not unified, but ‘multiply constructed’ across Turkish identity, Shi’i identity, different rituals, changing ‘discourses, practices and positions.’ This identification uses resources of history and culture in the construction of Ja’fari identity “within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies” (Hall and Du Gay 1996, p. 4). Because Ja’faris have to act strategically in the sociopolitical context, they adopt a balanced mix of Shi’i and Turkish identity as their culture. This mixture coincides with Hall’s deconstructive approach to discuss cultural identity. This duality in their identities (outsider as Ja’fari, insider as Turkish) and having an ambiguous meta-narrative causes the cultural identity of the Ja’faris to be one that is constantly played, moved, and constructed.

As this study tries to reveal, there are different contexts for this constant construction of the cultural identity of the Turkish Shi’is living in Igdir. (1) By emphasizing their love for Atatürk, the founder of the state, they make their Turkish identity visible, and with this emphasis on Atatürk, who is seen as the symbol of laicism, they interpret the laic state as a guarantee of their own religious freedom; (2) as a Shi’i minority, they maintain a distant relationship with the Sunni state-run institution Diyanet and attach importance to the autonomy of their religious identity; and (3) as Shi’i residents of a city bordering Iran, the largest Shi’i state in the Muslim world, they add a different context to their identity by maintaining their religious, historical, and cultural relations with this country. The issue of Turkish identity, which is also one of the subjects of this study, can be used as a starting point for future studies on nationalism among Turkish Shi’is. The field studies in this study can provide the necessary background for Turkish Shi’is’ attempts for the autonomous acceptance of their beliefs, the attitudes of the Shi’i mosques towards the Diyanet, and the social roles of the Shi’i clergy (mullahs). Due to the dearth of studies on Turkish Shi’is, examining their unique identity through a wide variety of concepts in the cultural, religious, and sociopolitical context of Turkey will contribute to the conceptual framework of minority studies in Turkey. Furthermore, it will provide a rich content necessary for a multi-layered and interdisciplinary approach to the concept of identity.