Kabir Tambar’s book The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Belonging and the Demands of History in Turkey examines the tensions of political pluralism within the framework of the multidimensional relations between the political visibility of the Alevis and the nation-state ideology. Tambar underlines that the conflict, intrinsic to the modern nation state, between the nationalist imagining of a unitary citizenry and the plurality of the population demarcates the boundaries of pluralism (p. 85). In the Turkish context, the place of Alevism as a religious/cultural identity within the historical framework of Turkish nationalism demonstrates the religious boundaries of Turkish identity on the one hand, while on the other hand, the Alevi community’s loyalty to the secular notion of the Turkish state in spite of the community’s pluralist ethos indicates the conflictual zone of pluralism (p. 4).

How the publicness of a distinct Alevi identity has accorded with the premises of the nation state’s Turkish identity is a crucial question dealt with by The Reckoning of Pluralism. Tambar asserts that the status of Alevis in the Republic of Turkey has been defined in terms of both an exclusive history of violence and an inclusive political discourse. In this context, Alevis—in order to fend for themselves against the numerous massacres they have sufferedFootnote ¹—abide by the modernist secular state’s conceptualization of Alevism, establishing their difference as a sign of the Turkish national identity’s authenticity stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia (pp. 11–13).

In order to analyze the tension between pluralism and the nation state’s ideal of uniformity, Tambar conducted an ethnographic study in the cities of Çorum and Ankara between 2005 and 2007. The study, based on participatory observations and in-depth interviews, examines the aforementioned tension within the framework of the daily practices of the Alevi community, such as ritual ceremonies and mourning rites. In particular, Tambar analyzes the Karbala mourning rite—which symbolizes the death of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn at Karbala in modern-day Iraq—as well as the public visibility of cem ceremonies, the ritual of religious worship for Alevi communities. Additionally, the book also uses “history” as a third analytical category for the examination of the relation between the Alevi community and the official discourse. In this context, this review will focus on these three analytical categories so as to evaluate the merits of The Reckoning of Pluralism.

Tambar employs a historicist methodology, with reference to Dipesh Chakrabarty, in order to contextualize Alevis’ inclusion into state-authorized national genres (p. 14). Chapters 3 and 5 of the book are dedicated to demonstrating the harmony that exists between the historiographies of nationalist historians and Alevi writers. He states that the justification of Anatolia as the homeland of the new republic and of Turkish identity served as the basis of national historiography in the early republican period (p. 75). He also underlines how two crucial presumptions of the national historiography on Alevism have led to the Alevis’ inclusion into the statist accounts of the past. The first of these presumptions was the selection of Anatolia as the social space within which Alevi religiosity came to be established and developed, resulting in Alevi religiosity being adapted geographically into the national boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. The second presumption was the historical evolution of Alevi religious history throughout the Turkic migration from Central Asia to Anatolia, which led to Alevism being related with Turkishness both historically and ethnically (p. 121).

Despite the historiographical conformity between Alevi writers and the statist discourse, public displays of Alevi rituals clearly demonstrate how the public expression of Alevi identity generates tensions between the state and Alevi communities. Tambar states that, on the one hand, public displays of cem ceremonies have paved the way for the visibility of Alevi traditions in the public sphere, a visibility which had hitherto not existed. On the other hand, the cem ceremony also indicates the boundaries of the unitary citizenship conceptualization of the republic toward the pluralist requests of Alevis. Whereas Alevis demand the legal recognition of cemevis as places of worship, state officials tend to reject the cem as a religious rite and cemevis as places of worship, instead assessing the cem as an element of the folkloric richness of Turkish culture (pp. 77–79). Thus, Tambar’s chapter on the public visibility of Alevi rituals indicates how the pluralist ethos of Alevis’ demand for the recognition of cemevis as places of worship pushes at the limits of the nation state’s monolithic vision concerning religious services.

The Karbala mourning rite, similarly, constitutes a site through which tensions between the space-time perception of the Turkish state and Alevi communities are demonstrated. Tambar states that the Karbala rituals and the practices of lamenting associated with them trivialize the constitutive role of Anatolia for Alevi identity and go beyond the scope of the space-time notion of Turkish nationalism. Furthermore, appeals to the Qur’an, the prophet Muhammad, and the twelve Imams theologically subordinate the historical narrative based on Turkic migration from Central Asia to Anatolia (p. 68). In this way, the Karbala mourning rite has the potential to destabilize the dominant narratives of locality, whose frame is Anatolian geography, and of ethnicity, which is based on Turkishness. In this context, Tambar shows special interest in a pro-Shi’i cemaat in Çorum whose theology conflicts not only with mainstream Alevi cosmology, but also with the spatio-temporal frame of the official discourse. The last chapter of the book is devoted to this Çorum-based cemaat, which is marginalized within the Alevi community. In this way, Tambar aims to indicate the limits of pluralism through his analysis of this particular pro-Shi’i community (p. 167).

The ethnographic methodology of The Reckoning of Pluralism not only deciphers the political power relations embedded in daily life practices, but also leads the reader to reconsider the complicated relations between the religious, the political, and daily life on the one hand, and between pluralism and citizenship on the other. The book thus makes an important contribution to the literature on Alevism. However, I would also like to underline certain additional points pertaining especially to the dynamic historiographical relation between Alevis and the official discourse in order to pave the way for a possible critique of Tambar’s book.

The Reckoning of Pluralism has shortcomings in its analysis of changes in the official discourse of Turkish politics. The book suggests permanent parallels between the national discourse and Alevi historiography on the basis of modernism, nationalism, and secularism; however, the formal ideologies of both Turkey and of Alevi historiography have undergone political changes since the latter part of the first decade of this century. On the one hand, the rising influence of the Kurdish movement in Kurdish Alevi regions has pluralized the Alevi historiography both ethnically and geographically. As such, a Kurdish Alevi historiography has developed on the basis of Kurdish identity and Mesopotamian geography, making it rather different from the premises of Turkish Alevi historiography. On the other hand, the official discourse of Turkish nationalism has become somewhat Islamized, and its geographical space has extended under the influence of neo-Ottomanist debates so as to encompass the Middle East and the Balkans. Such a change in the premises of Alevi historiography and the official discourse has naturally transformed their mutual understanding. For instance, state officials insisted during the process of the Alevi initiativeFootnote ² that Alevism be defined on the basis of Islam. In this way, the religious emphasis on the Karbala, which deconstructs the national ideology of the “old Turkey,” might link the Alevis with the official discourse of the “new Turkey” on the basis of its Islamic connotations. In this context, the aligned and conflictual historiographical forms of the Alevi narrative and official ideology require reevaluation within the framework of the recent changes in power relations.

All in all, such criticisms notwithstanding, The Reckoning of Pluralism enables the reader to consider the multidimensional relations between pluralism and unitary citizenship through the Alevi community’s affiliation with the modern nation state through the iconographic and historiographical forms authorized by the Republic of Turkey. As such, The Reckoning of Pluralism makes a contribution not only to Alevi studies, but also to the literature on pluralism.