Alevi Digital Archives and Epistemic Autonomy: The Institutional, Academic, and Digital Transformation of Alevi Knowledge

“The Alevi Publication Boom” and New Forms of Circulating Knowledge on Alevism

In the early 1990s, the profound transformation of global political balances, the rise of identity-based politics in Turkey, and, more importantly, the massacres and forced displacement policies that took place in Alevi living spaces—such as Sivas (1993), Dersim (1994), and the Gazi and Ümraniye neighbourhoods of Istanbul (1995)—targeted Alevis sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, and brought Alevi politicisation to a new stage. During this period, Alevis began to organise rapidly both in Turkey and in the Western European diaspora, becoming more visible in the public sphere under their own name, through their own institutions, and with their own demands. Alongside concerns over security, the defence, preservation, and transmission of Alevi culture and identity to new generations were among the main motivations. This was followed by an intense struggle for official recognition, which achieved important gains in several Western European countries. This international visibility was not limited to the political sphere. It also strongly stimulated academic, intellectual, and artistic production on Alevi history, culture, sociology, politics, belief worlds, and ritual practices (Zırh 2026, 1–18).

During this period, often described as a “publication boom” on Alevism and extending especially from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, journals, books, edited volumes, articles, newspaper series, and later texts circulating online began to multiply at an increasing pace. These were produced by researchers, religious leaders, intellectuals, institutional representatives, and local memory bearers. At the same time, theses, reports, and research projects on Alevism in Turkey and in the international academic world also gained growing visibility. In the end, a multilingual, multi-layered, and internationally recognised body of literature on Alevism emerged.

This vast literature undoubtedly also reflects the historical, socio-cultural, geographical, linguistic, symbolic, and religious-traditional differences that Alevi communities have carried from the past, as well as the strong contemporary political expressions of these differences. Alevis reinterpret and transmit their historical and cultural differences through modern forms of politics, migration experiences, diaspora conditions, and struggles for recognition. The actors involved in knowledge production are, of course, not outside this socio-political atmosphere. It is therefore necessary to note that knowledge on Alevism has never taken shape as a linear or homogeneous narrative. On the contrary, the intense debates around popular questions—what Alevism is, how it should be defined, how its historical roots should be interpreted, how its relationship with Islam and other Abrahamic religions and/or traditions should be understood, and how geographical, ethnic, and linguistic differences should be situated within this picture—constitute one of the central phenomena shaping contemporary Alevism.

As the first quarter of the twenty-first century comes to an end, one of the most visible outcomes of changing and transforming human conditions is the entry of internet technologies into social life. These technologies have now become an irreversible part of everyday life, public communication, and the ways in which new generations acquire knowledge. Naturally, all forms of knowledge circulate within their own social, political, cultural, and institutional contexts; they are reproduced through different knowledge regimes, forms of authority, and logics of classification. From this perspective, the vast literature on Alevism mentioned above has not merely found a new space of circulation in the digital world. Today, questions about how knowledge on Alevism will be collected, by whom it will be classified, through which conceptual frameworks it will be interpreted, and by what tools it will be transmitted to future generations have also begun to generate new methods, new institutions, and new fields of debate.

The focus of this article is the process through which the cultural heritage that Alevis carried until the end of the twentieth century largely through oral culture, collective memory, ritual practices, Ocak–talip relations, local narratives, and various sacred written and material documents is now being transferred to the web, classified, and re-evaluated with the help of contemporary digital technologies. Buyruks, genealogies, manuscripts, cönks, ritual texts, nefes, deyiş, institutional archives, reports prepared on Alevis, field notes, audio-visual recordings, and oral history narratives are among the main materials of this new field of digital archiving. Yet the transfer of these materials into digital environments cannot be seen merely as a technical act of preservation. This process also raises questions about who will represent knowledge on Alevism, through which concepts it will be organised, and how the Alevi community’s right to speak over its own memory will be protected.

Alevi society, Alevi politicisation, and the Alevi movement have always had a noteworthy—and still insufficiently studied—interaction and proximity with academia (Gültekin 2025, 24–33). Today, therefore, the internationally recognised field of Alevi Studies carries several structural, intellectual, and institutional specificities that distinguish it from other area studies fields, including neighbouring fields such as Kurdish Studies. One important reflection of this specificity is that Alevi institutions began, already from the late 1990s onward, to build their own “academies,” educational platforms, research centres, and memory initiatives. Today, various projects, digital platforms, archival initiatives, and encyclopedic works developing within this field of interaction are shaping a new space of knowledge production and transmission that may be called “Alevi digital archives.” This article may be read as a preliminary attempt to assess, frame, and discuss this new field, which will directly affect future generations and is closely connected to Alevi institutionality.

The Institutionalisation of Alevi Studies: Universities, Institutes, and Alevi Academies (See Table 1)

One of the early examples of institutional work on Alevism and Bektashism within a university in Turkey was the Centre for Turkish Culture and Hacı Bektaş Veli Research, established at Gazi University on 28 October 1987 under Higher Education Law No. 2547. The Centre aimed “to document the place of Hacı Bektaş Veli in the history of Turkish culture, to address gaps in knowledge in this field, to develop cooperation with similar institutions, and to conduct research on cultural figures such as Pir Sultan Abdal, Hasan Dede, and Gül Baba.” Today, the fact that its library holds approximately 3,500 printed works, around 100 cönks, journals and manuscript documents, as well as digital copies of nearly 600 rare works obtained from libraries around the world, shows that the Centre created an early written-source and archival base in the field of Alevism-Bektashism. At the same time, founded within the YÖK-centred higher education order that emerged after the 1980 military coup, this Centre also reflects the Turkish state’s tendency to approach religious-social formations that it does not officially recognise, such as Alevism, not as independent faith communities, but rather within the categories of “Turkish culture,” “folklore,” “Sufism,” and “cultural heritage.” For this reason, the Centre is important, on the one hand, as an early public institution that contributed to the accumulation of documents, publications, and academic work in the field of Alevism-Bektashism. On the other hand, it is also significant because it shows the Sunni-normative and culturalist boundaries within which the state-academia relationship in Turkey has produced knowledge on Alevism.

Within Alevi institutions, initiatives aimed at academic knowledge production, faith education, archiving, and the formation of institutional memory appear to have emerged as early as the late 1990s, during an early phase in which the Alevi movement was developing and becoming institutionalised. The role of the European diaspora in this process is particularly noteworthy. The Avrupa Alevi Akademisi (The European Alevi Academy), founded in Germany in 1997 and today continuing its work under the name Alevi Academy, set itself goals such as preparing informational materials needed by Alevi institutions, carrying out German- and Turkish-language educational work on Alevism, compiling written sources for faith services, developing training programmes for pirs, anas, zakirs, and young people, collecting data on Alevis, and creating an Alevi archive and memory (Engin 2017). In this respect, this initiative should be understood not merely as an educational institution in the narrow sense, but as an early effort to collect, transmit, and institutionalise knowledge on Alevism under diaspora conditions.

Another independent institute initiative centred on Alevi institutions in the European diaspora is the Alevi-Bektashi Cultural Institute, also founded in Germany in 1997. The Institute aims to research the historical, intellectual, and faith-based structure of Alevism and Bektashism within a scientific framework; to identify oral and written sources; to encourage academic work across different disciplines; and to transmit Alevi-Bektashi faith practices, ritual worlds, and philosophical discourse to broader audiences. In this respect, the Institute should not be seen only as a cultural or faith centre. It should also be regarded as one of the early diaspora-based knowledge and memory initiatives that treated the archiving of written and oral sources—such as genealogies, imperial decrees, authorisation documents, foundation deeds, velâyetnames, cönks, divans, nefes, duvaz imam, deme, and deyiş—as a strategic priority.

In Turkey, one of the earliest known examples is the Alevi Institute, founded in Ankara in 2008 through the initiative of the Headquarters of the Hacı Bektaş Veli Anatolian Culture Foundation and the Alevi Cultural Associations. It should also be emphasised that most of the academics who supported this initiative had previously been involved in Kırkbudak – Journal of Anatolian Folk Beliefs Research, the first peer-reviewed journal in the field of Alevi Studies, published between 2004 and 2007. The Institute was established on the basis of the observation that “although many books and journals on Alevism had been published since the 1990s, the scientific accumulation of knowledge in the field remained insufficient.” It aimed “to conduct scientific studies on Alevism, to compile existing efforts, and to contribute to the preservation and development of Alevism.” The presence of academics, religious leaders, researchers, artists, and institutional representatives in its scientific and advisory boards made this initiative an early and notable bridge between Alevi institutions and academic knowledge production.

In the 2010s, a second similar initiative emerged in the European Alevi diaspora. The Delil Education Academy, which brought together intellectuals within Alevi institutions and sought to build a multi-dimensional educational space for Alevi society, may be considered one of the important contemporary examples of this institutional-academic search. Introduced through a symposium held at the University of Duisburg-Essen in December 2017, the Delil Education Academy defined its aim as producing scientific knowledge in the fields of academic institutionalisation and education; consolidating and strengthening existing knowledge; and sharing it with relevant institutions. In this sense, the Delil Education Academy can be seen as one of the concrete steps taken in relation to the long-standing goal of the European Alevi movement to establish “its own scientific institution.” The initiative positioned itself as an educational movement seeking to strengthen the institutional capacity of Alevi civil society, its possibilities for critical thinking, and its relationship with academic knowledge production.

Similarly, one of the initiatives that developed within Alevi institutions in Turkey in the 2020s is the GADEV Alevi Academy, established under the Garip Dede Dergâhı Foundation. Announced to the public in 2022, the academy aimed to approach Alevism at the intersection of the social sciences and traditional fields of knowledge centred on faith, erkân, and Ocaks through programmes titled “Alevism in Turkey from a Social Science Perspective” and “Yol-Erkân, Faith, and Ocaks in Alevism.” The fact that the programme content covers disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, law, gender studies, ecology, media, politics, economics, and theology has made the GADEV Alevi Academy one of the interdisciplinary education and knowledge-production initiatives developing within Alevi institutions.

One of the most recent examples of similar efforts in the diaspora is the Dortmund-based Rıza Şehri Academy. Opened in January 2024, the academy aims to research the history, philosophy, theology, mythology, rituals, and socio-cultural values of the Alevi faith; to preserve the knowledge and documents that emerge from this work; to transmit them to future generations; and to introduce them into international literature. What makes the Rıza Şehri Academy especially important for the discussion in this article is that it is not only an education and research platform, but also the host of the Alevi Encyclopedia project, which began in April 2024.

The Alevitische Akademie (Alevi Academy) in Austria may also be mentioned within this line of diasporic institutionalisation. Operating under the umbrella of the Alevitische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich (ALEVI), the academy organises seminars, panels, conferences, and educational activities aimed at the study, transmission, and public dissemination of Alevism. Although its official website does not state a clear founding date, the fact that the name “Alevitische Akademie” was registered by ALEVI in 2019 indicates that this institutional designation acquired formal status in the recent period.

At this point, it is useful to look briefly at the Alevi-focused academic structures that have developed, especially since the 2000s, within European universities, pedagogical universities, institutes, and teacher-training programmes. These initiatives in Europe have largely taken shape around theology, religious pedagogy, teacher education, diaspora, identity, and memory studies. At the University of Hamburg, the process began with the establishment of Alevi Theology within teacher education in the context of “Religious Education for All” (2014), and later became institutionalised under the name Institute for Alevi Theology (2024). Positioned as one of the first academic institutes in the world dedicated to Alevi theology, this structure aims to research and teach Alevitentum in its historical and contemporary self-understandings, and in its regional, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity. At the University of Vienna, Alevi Theological Studies was established within the Institute for Islamic-Theological Studies in the Faculty of Catholic Theology (2018), and was defined as one of the first internationally oriented university-level theological fields to make Alevism an object of research and teaching on the basis of its own religious self-understandings. With the opening of the independent individual bachelor’s programme titled Alevi Theological Studies (2022/23), the Vienna case has become even more important for the institutionalisation of Alevi theology in Europe. Another important line in Austria is the training of Alevi religious education teachers that developed around the Institute for Alevi Religion at the Kirchliche Pädagogische Hochschule Wien/Niederösterreich (2018). Here, students can choose a focus on Alevi Religion or Alevi Doctrine within primary school teacher education; through a structure of 60 ECTS spread across bachelor’s and master’s levels, they can acquire qualification as primary school teachers as well as Alevi religious education teachers. This example should be understood not as a theology department in the narrow sense, but as an institutional model in the field of Alevi religious pedagogy and teacher training. Similarly, in Germany, the Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten represents an early and noteworthy example in the field of Alevi religious pedagogy. It became possible for teachers there to receive additional training in Alevi religious education / religious pedagogy (2011), and the process gained a more institutional character with the creation of the first academic position in the field of Alevitentum at a German higher education institution (2013). Project-based initiatives such as the Alevi Religion and Identity Project around the University of Westminster in London should also be added to this picture. Thus, Alevi Studies in Europe has developed not only as a field of academic research, but also as an institutional field connected to religious education, public recognition, diaspora identity, and community-based knowledge production.

In Turkey, university-based centres and institutes on Alevism-Bektashism point to an earlier public-academic line, yet many of these structures have followed a limited or interrupted trajectory in terms of continuity, productivity, and institutional visibility. The Hacı Bektaş Veli Research Centre, originating in Gazi University and later transferred to Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, constitutes an early example of this line. Other structures—such as the Institute for Alevi Studies at İnönü University, the Hacı Bektaş Veli Research and Application Institute at Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University, the Centre for Alevi Studies Research and Application at Munzur University, the Alevism-Bektashism Application and Research Centre at Toros University, the Hacı Bektaş Veli Research and Application Centre at Hitit University, the Alevi-Bektashi Culture Application and Research Centre at Süleyman Demirel University, and the Alevism and Ahl al-Bayt Culture Application and Research Centre at Dicle University—show that knowledge on Alevism-Bektashism has found institutional counterparts within the university field. However, unlike many European examples, in most of these centres Alevism has been approached not through an independent theological self-understanding or through a minority-religious-community-based framework of knowledge production, but rather under headings such as “Turkish culture,” “the legacy of Hacı Bektaş Veli,” “Sufism,” “folklore,” “social integration,” and “cultural research.” As a result, the geographical, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and historical differences displayed by Alevi communities even within Turkey are either not visible in most cases or have been seriously manipulated. For this reason, academic institutionalisation in Turkey has, on the one hand, produced archival, graduate education, publication, and event-based platforms in the field of Alevism-Bektashism. On the other hand, it has also served as an important indicator of the conceptual and institutional boundaries within which the state-academia relationship defines knowledge on Alevism.

One of the striking points here is that both the academy initiatives developed within Alevi institutions and the official university-centred academic structures have operated within certain limits. Early examples such as the Alevi Institute and the Delil Education Academy created significant excitement and expectations at the time of their foundation. Yet over time, they appear to have struggled to establish a regular, continuous, and publicly traceable line of institutional production. Newer initiatives that emerged in the 2020s, such as the GADEV Alevi Academy and the Rıza Şehri Academy, continue their work, but they are still in the process of building a lasting foundation in terms of inter-institutional cooperation, joint research programmes, regular publication activities, and the transfer of the knowledge produced to the wider Alevi community and the public through written or digital media. At the same time, academic work outside Alevi institutions—especially in the Turkish context—appears to be strongly shaped by dominant academic paradigms, the current political climate, and the state’s official approach to Alevism. As a result, within this overall picture, the production, collection, and transmission of knowledge on Alevism has reached a new threshold. For centuries, Alevi memory was carried largely through oral culture, collective memory, ritual practices, religious-social institutions, Dergâh and/or Ocak–talip networks. With the dynamics of modernisation, migration, and politicisation, it first gained visibility through printed publications. From the 2010s onward, it has begun to move into a new field of production and circulation through internet technologies, digital archives, online encyclopedias, video recordings, oral history projects, online museums, digital exhibitions, and open-access knowledge platforms.