The Search for Spirituality and Beauty: New Ways of Religiosity among Artists and Intellectuals from Dersim/Tunceli
The Search for Spirituality and Beauty: New Ways of Religiosity among Artists and Intellectuals from Dersim/Tunceli

Author(s): Martin Greve
Subject(s): Theology and Religion, Sociology of Culture
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Spirituality; Religiosity; Artists; Intellectuals; Dersim; Tunceli; Druidism; Tengrism; Reactivations; Ancie; Spiritualities; Religions; Identity; Politics; Taaraism
Summary/Abstract: The research for contemporary religiosity in Turkey’s province of Tunceli (the former region of Dersim in central eastern Anatolia) and among migrants of Dersim origin living abroad in Turkish or European cities will confront us with a case of reconstruction and aestheticisation of a declining religion as an ancient religion. The present article will briefly describe the development in four steps: First the decline of the traditional religion in Dersim and its replacement by a standardised Alevism. Second, this decline and change led to a growing loss of acceptance among the population of Tunceli and migrants from Dersim abroad. Consequently, a growing number of intellectuals began to search among other religions for a substitution for the lost spirituality and for what might be the “roots” of their lost religion. These newly added spiritual elements were imagined as being part of their “own” former religion, or at least being closely related to it. In particular, young artists and intellectuals developed individual syntheses composed of beliefs and religious practices of different origins. Third, music also became an issue for research and reconstruction. Many musicians from Dersim identified themselves with lost religious traditions and their re-imagination as an ancient religion, rejecting the contemporary standardised Turkish Alevism. Four, eventually, the music, which already was a central part of the religion in Dersim, became aesthetically sophisticated and developed into a kind of artistic music to be presented both on the music market or in serious concerts.

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