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Christian, Muslim, and Alevi Armenians: Parallel regimes of religious and racial exclusion in Turkey
Abstract
Whether in official censuses or media and literature, “Armenians of Turkey” was traditionally seen as equivalent to “Christian Armenians of Turkey.” Armenianness was classified as a non-Muslim minority identity since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and thus confined within religious boundaries. However, descendants of Armenians Islamized or Alevized during or soon after the 1915 Armenian Genocide began to publicly emerge as “Muslim” and “Alevi Armenians” in the past few decades. Having been subjected to lineage-based racist treatment, these “unorthodox” Armenians usually hold a primordialist approach to Armenianness, defining it as a “race” (soy/ırk in Turkish) that is independent of religion. They are thus at odds with the Turkish state’s formal classification of Armenianness and with many Christian Armenians’ perception of Armenian identity as being inseparable from Christianity. I discuss the different ways in which Armenianness is treated on the part of the Turkish state and society, and the ways in which it is experienced by Turkey’s Christian and non-Christian Armenians. Such ethnographic examination allows me to reflect on the parallel regimes of religious and racial discrimination in the post-genocidal environment of Turkey, raising further questions about the workings of exclusivist nationalism, about the construction of Turkishness in relation to its many others, and about the extent of racialized thinking in the country.
Discipline
Other
Geographic Area
Armenia
Turkey
Sub Area
None