Politics of Heritage and UNESCO’s State-led Heritage Programs

Many commentators have already observed that heritage is neither intrinsically nor authentically valuable; it is rather a political construction that involves selecting and valorizing cultural references of the past for current purposes and interests.^{Footnote 10} Heritage, then, “is by no means a neutral category of self-definition nor an inherently positive thing,”^{Footnote 11} but an exclusive category that valorizes certain objects and practices, while ignoring others.^{Footnote 12} It is through this selective construction process that the political function of heritage unfolds. Being “an inherently political act,”^{Footnote 13} heritage making is a highly contested and intrinsically exclusionary process that involves a complex negotiation process among a range of actors over the ownership of cultural artifacts and traditions. To quote Lowenthal,

Heritage is exclusive in its nature because it is strongly tied up with identity construction. Collective identities are formed through claims of mutual attachment to a particular history that is materialized in certain objects, places, and traditions. As Anico and Peralta suggest, providing a resource for the “representation of identities and a place for their performance,” heritage offers a substantial material and symbolic assistance for identity construction.^{Footnote 15} The processes of inclusion and exclusion operate simultaneously in the formation of collective identities: Assumptions about group similarities, as often argued, heavily rely on other assumptions about group differences. Whereas shared heritage encourages unity and belonging among some people, it does so by excluding some others from such heritage: “All heritage is someone’s heritage and inevitably not someone else’s,” as Graham, Ashworth, and Tunbridge remind us, “ultimately, because it is what and where we say it is (the pivotal variable being ‘we’) then one person’s heritage is the disinheritance of another.”^{Footnote 16} As diverse social groups tend to develop distinct versions of a given past, conflicting interpretations, meanings and narratives often overlap in a single heritage tradition, site or object—this is what makes heritage, according to Tunbridge and Ashworth, “dissonant” in nature.^{Footnote 17} Heritage, in this respect, is intimately connected with power,^{Footnote 18} involving multiple interest groups struggling over the right to define, interpret and manage heritage.

This interplay between heritage and identity is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the national identity building process. Heritage serves to fulfill national interests by underwriting the construction of a shared identity through the claims of a distinct and totalizing national history. In the words of Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge, “imagining of an internal national homogeneity ... draws inevitably upon a particular representation of heritage and a mythology of the past for its coherence and legitimacy.”^{Footnote 19} Laurajane Smith explains the pivotal role of heritage in national identity building through the concept of Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD), which refers to the dominant discourse on heritage that structures how we think, write, and talk about heritage.^{Footnote 20} Dominating the professional debates and practices about heritage, the AHD constructs heritage as “all that is ‘good,’ grand, monumental and, primarily, of national significance.”^{Footnote 21} One crucial aspect of the AHD is, then, the ways in which it unfolds in relation to nationalism. According to Smith, being both created by and constitutive of the ideology of nationalism, the AHD plays a vital role not only in constructing a unified national identity,^{Footnote 22} but also in marginalizing other identities that are formed using conceptualizations of heritage that do not conform to the AHD.^{Footnote 23}

While UNESCO has remained to be the leading “heritage authorizer”^{Footnote 24} following the proclamation of the 1972 World Heritage Convention,^{Footnote 25} there has been a particular concern in the field of heritage studies about its use by States Parties for the purposes of national cohesion and integration.^{Footnote 26} States Parties play a key role in the implementation and administration of the World Heritage program. Adapting a top-down heritage management system, this program leaves to States Parties the decision of determining which cultural elements to be identified and protected as World Heritage, designated for the World Heritage List, as well as which meanings should be attributed to them. This state dominance often results in the overrepresentation of a state version of heritage, where this UNESCO program serves other political goals of States Parties that are not related to heritage preservation.^{Footnote 27} In the words of Logan, Langfield, and Craith,

Stressing this politically charged nature of heritage, many studies have shown how it is common for States Parties to use the World Heritage program to nationalize the heritage of marginalized groups as a means to force their integration into the dominant culture. Robert Shepherd, for instance, discusses how UNESCO aids the efforts of the Chinese government to incorporate Tibetan culture into mainstream Chinese culture, through the case of the inscription of Tibet’s Potala Palace on the World Heritage List as the “joint technical and aesthetic achievements of the peoples of China,” instead of the cultural symbol of Tibetan identity or nation.^{Footnote 29} Similarly, examining the inclusion of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome) on the World Heritage List by the Japanese government, Olwen Beazley shows how the process has served the Japanese government to silence the voices of both the survivors of the atomic blast and its non-Japanese victims.^{Footnote 30} Beazley argues that as UNESCO membership extends only to States Parties, the narratives that are promoted through World Heritage program are often selective and homogenizing national narratives that considerably undermine the representation of minority groups within the nation.^{Footnote 31}

As Janet Blake puts it, the expansion in the scope of heritage management from tangible to intangible products has made heritage preservation a much more complex and political question than it was when such preservation was restricted to monuments and artifacts; because intangible heritage is rooted in the “social and cultural lives of the cultural communities.”^{Footnote 32} Following this logic, UNESCO has decided to adopt a bottom-up approach to intangible heritage and initiated new mechanisms to facilitate community participation in decision-making processes. The ICH Convention, first of all, develops a community-based definition of intangible heritage indicating that only the cultural elements identified by culture bearers (and not by the experts or state officials) as their shared heritage can be considered intangible heritage by UNESCO. Online description of intangible heritage featured on the ICH Convention’s official website puts it rather succinctly: “intangible cultural heritage can only be heritage when it is recognized as such by the communities, groups or individuals that create, maintain and transmit it—without their recognition, nobody else can decide for them that a given expression or practice is their heritage.”^{Footnote 33}

The ICH Convention also brings new responsibilities to States Parties for ensuring community participation in heritage activities. Article 15 asks them to guarantee active involvement of culture bearers in management of their intangible heritage.^{Footnote 34} In addition, selection criteria for inscription on the Intangible Heritage Lists require States Parties to prepare nominations with the widest possible participation of communities, groups, or individuals concerned and to prove their free, prior, and informed consent to the proposed nomination. This consent can be provided in written, recorded, or any other applicable form, depending on the situation and the context.^{Footnote 35}

While these aspects of the ICH Convention make it the most community-friendly UNESCO heritage program at the legislative level, it still falls short in moving away from the state-centric approach to heritage identification and management. First of all, having no presence at the local level, UNESCO has no direct contact with culture bearers at any stage of the implementation and administration of the convention. States Parties usually designate branch offices of culture ministries or other relevant state institutions as executive bodies of the convention. These institutions are in charge of activities such as the creation of national inventories of intangible heritage, selection of cultural elements to be proposed for the UNESCO Intangible Heritage Lists, and preparation of their nomination files. State institutions and representatives, therefore, have a mediator’s role between the international and local level, and the application of the aforementioned community participation criteria depends basically upon their goodwill, since the convention provides no mechanism to control whether these criteria are really met on the ground.

Ambiguity surrounding the definition of community in the ICH Convention further adds to the dominant positioning of States Parties. As Lixinski points out, the convention adopts a view that posits the definition of community as unnecessary and considers the one accepted by States Parties sufficient to show community participation in decision-making processes.^{Footnote 36} In other words, the convention leaves to States Parties the decision of who should be considered as culture bearers, who qualifies as the community representatives and whose free, prior, and informed consent should be taken. Last but not least, the World Heritage program relies on the evaluations of its advisory bodies when inscribing elements to the World Heritage List.^{Footnote 37} The evaluations of nominations for inscription on the Representative List, however, are made by a subsidiary body selected from the members of the Intergovernmental Committee, which is composed of representatives from 24 States Parties elected by the General Assembly of the States Parties for a period of four years.

States Parties, therefore, have an overall control and authority over the administration and implementation of the ICH Convention; given that the final decision of how to define the culture bearers and who is eligible for representing them, what to nominate and inscribe to the UNESCO Intangible Heritage Lists, which meanings to be attributed to them, and how to manage the listed practices, rests with them. Hence, despite adaptation of some timid measures to empower the role of culture bearers in the identification and management of their intangible heritage, the ICH Convention, like other UNESCO heritage programs, serves to strengthen States Parties’ domination over heritage activities. This, as Marc Askew explains, turns the state-led intangible heritage programs of UNESCO into a tool for cultural domination.

The case of Semah provides an apt example of how the ICH Convention’s community participation criteria can be easily disregarded on the ground by States Parties for pursuing other political or nationalistic objectives (and in quite creative ways). Before moving on to discuss the heritage designation process of Semah, it is first necessary to give some background on the recent policies of the Turkish government with regard to the Alevi question.

The Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) Sunni Outlook and the Alevi Question

Alevis have different religious principles and practices than Sunni and Shia Muslims. The majority of Alevis does not attend mosque services or follow the five pillars of Islam, essential requirements of the Islamic belief as accepted both by the Sunnis and Shias. Most of them do not practice the five-times-a-day prayer Namaz, fast, give Zekat (alms) during Ramadan, or make a pilgrimage to Mecca. In contrast to Sunnis and Shias, who follow the guidance of Imam as their religious leader, Alevis follow the leadership of Dede. Whereas Sunnis and Shias worship in Arabic, Alevis usually worship in Turkish.

While Alevis constitute the second largest religious group after the Sunni-Muslim majority, their unique religious identity is not officially recognized in Turkey.^{Footnote 39} This has to do with the institutionalization of a single identity model since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 that has represented the nation as both ethnically Turkish and Sunni Muslim.^{Footnote 40} Following this logic, the Turkish state refused to recognize Islamic sectarian differences, and Alevis were officially identified as a subgroup within Sunni Islam. Nevertheless, owing to the secular structure of Turkey that had prevented Islam to be a “dominant national identifier” until the 1980s,^{Footnote 41} Alevis had been relatively free from state-enforced policies seeking their conversion to Sunni Islam. Furthermore, public manifestations of some elements of Alevi tradition such as literature, music, and festivals were tolerated if not exactly welcomed, as long as they were represented as aspects of Turkish folk culture.

This situation has significantly changed following the 1980 military coup, when Turkish government adopted Sunni Islam as an official state religion in order to suppress the radical left-wing movement.^{Footnote 42} With the growing dominance of Sunni Islam in Turkish political life, Alevis have increasingly been subject to state policies of “Sunnification.” It was during this period that the government made Sunni religious education obligatory in primary and secondary schools, and initiated a program to construct mosques in predominantly Alevi areas, even though Alevis do not usually attend mosque services.^{Footnote 43} The Alevi-Sunni tension was also escalated following the Sunni domination, and Alevis have become victims of Islamic radicalism. One of the most violent attacks against them occurred in 1993 when an Islamist crowd set a hotel on fire after a Friday Prayer during an Alevi festival in the city of Sivas. Thirty-seven people (most of whom were Alevi writers and artists) were killed in the arson. The mayor of Sivas and the security forces were accused of sympathizing with the Islamists and for not intervening in the events; they were, however, never tried or convicted.

These developments led to a so-called “Alevi revival”—a period marked by the mobilization of Alevis against discrimination and danger of Sunnification. One significant outcome of the Alevi revival has been the growing visibility of Alevi identity in Turkish public sphere. Aykan Erdemir details the signs of such visibility: increased willingness of Alevis to present themselves as “Alevi”; publication of a great quantity of books and journals on Alevism; founding of various local and national radio stations serving the Alevi audience; visibility of Alevis in Turkish visual, print, and cyber media; and an upsurge in the number of Alevi voluntary organizations and their members.^{Footnote 44} Among these issues, widespread organization of Alevis around voluntary organizations has been especially significant.^{Footnote 45} These organizations have functioned as the voice of Alevis, playing salient roles in the framing and expression of Alevi political demands. Today, these organizations are very active, are well attended, and work harmoniously, voicing demands for official recognition and communal rights. The Turkish government, however, has remained unresponsive to these demands.

Turkey has been ruled by the single-party government of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002.^{Footnote 46} AKP has its roots in Sunni Islam. Nevertheless, it claims to be a conservative democratic rather than a Sunni-Islamist party. Leading figures in the AKP leadership often claim that they maintain the same distance from all beliefs in accordance with the secular principles of the state, asserting Islam as “a cultural backdrop for an essentially secular political agenda.”^{Footnote 47} The stance of AKP in relation to Turkey’s Alevi question, however, raises serious doubts about the legitimacy of these arguments.

As Kerem Öktem suggests, with a “pious Sunni Muslim mindset, the AKP can reach out only to those Alevis who are already assimilated and to those who are willing to integrate themselves into the fold of Sunni Islam for one reason or another.”^{Footnote 48} Contrary to AKP’s claims to stand at an equal distance from all beliefs, the majority of Alevis accuse it of harboring a Sunni-Islamist agenda and claim to suffer further discrimination and policies of Sunnification under the AKP rule. Indeed, despite having different political stances and approaches to Alevism, Alevi organizations have greatly agreed on three main demands from the AKP government in recent years. Yet instead of addressing these demands, the government has pushed forward policies to integrate Alevis into Sunni Islam.

Turkey still has compulsory religious courses for all students. Alevis disapprove of these courses due to their Sunni content and ask for their total elimination from the public school curricula, or at least their reformulation as elective courses. Alevis also brought this issue before the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2007 that religious education should be optional for Alevis as these courses only cover Sunni Islam.^{Footnote 49} Nevertheless, instead of making these courses optional, the government changed the course curricula to cover Alevism as a chapter, whose content was criticized by Alevis for representing their belief within Sunni Islam.^{Footnote 50} Furthermore, the government recently introduced three elective courses with Sunni Islamic content (the life of the Prophet Mohammed, Basic Religious Knowledge, and the Quran) to the public school curricula.

In addition, the regulation of all public Islamic activities is under the authority of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (DRA) in Turkey, which is in charge of managing and appointing Imams to mosques, offering Quran courses, organizing the pilgrimage to Mecca, and delivering opinions on various Islamic matters.^{Footnote 51} Alevis ask for the total elimination or downsizing of the DRA, because for them, it only represents Sunni Islam and works actively toward their Sunnification. As Markus Dressler relates:

Nevertheless, Turkey witnesses a growing economic and political power of DRA under the AKP government. The budget of the directorate increased drastically during the AKP rule. In 2013, DRA receives a total of 4.6 billion Turkish liras, which represents an increase around one billion liras compared to its budget in 2012.^{Footnote 53} This makes DRA the 12th richest public institution in Turkey with a greater budget share than the Interior, Foreign Affairs, or Health Ministries.^{Footnote 54} Alevis refuse to finance the pro-Sunni policies of DRA with their taxes, as these policies run counter to their values and interests. In addition, while the directorate does not have a binding legal force in Turkish law,^{Footnote 55} the government relies totally on its opinion in Alevi matters. DRA rejects Alevi recognition claims on the basis that the recognition of Islamic sectarian differences would damage the integrity of Islam and undermine Turkey’s Muslim unity.

From the 1990s on, Alevis began to gather in new worship places in urban areas called Cemevis (house of Cem) constructed for hosting Cem ceremonies and other Alevi activities.^{Footnote 56} Alevis have demanded the official recognition of Cemevis as houses of worship. Cemevi can currently exist only under the status of “cultural centers,” because mosques are the only officially recognized places of Muslim worship in Turkey. As Yildirim states, the nonrecognition of Cemevis as places of worship brings both legal and financial restraints on Alevis: It denies Cemevis’ exemptions from property, electricity, and water taxes, and it makes worship activities in Cemevis technically unlawful.^{Footnote 57} The government, though, refuses to recognize the Cemevi as a worship place, citing once again DRA’s opinion, which opposes such recognition on the grounds that the Cemevi cannot be an alternative to the mosque according to Islamic principles, because the mosque is the only legitimate worship place of all Muslims. Alevis face obstacles from local authorities in opening Cemevis, as denials of permission or long delays on their requests for the construction of Cemevis are not uncommon.^{Footnote 58} Moreover, while construction of Cemevis faces restrictions, enforced mosque building in predominantly Alevi areas has been on the rise.

These government policies have met with strong opposition from Alevis. For the first time in the history of the Republic, Alevi organizations jointly organized a series of anti-AKP demonstrations across Turkey, which brought out tens of thousands of Alevis into the streets. To respond their growing political salience, the government launched an official program called the “Alevi initiative.”^{Footnote 59} Seven workshops were held from June 2009 to January 2010 as part of the initiative with the participation of Turkey’s political, religious, and cultural elite (including non-Alevis), who shared opinions on their interpretation of Turkey’s Alevi question and its possible solutions.^{Footnote 60} While government authorities have valued the Alevi initiative as a significant step toward meeting Alevi demands, the initiative was not received positively by Alevis. In contrast to extensive participation of Sunni politicians, media executives, religious leaders, and academics (some of whom were known to be openly hostile to Alevi demands), fewer Alevis were invited to the workshops. Consequently, many Alevi opinion leaders boycotted the workshops, claiming that Alevi initiative was taking place in the absence of relevant Alevi representatives. For the majority of Alevis, the initiative was yet another attempt from the government to integrate them into Sunni Islam.^{Footnote 61}

While Semah received UNESCO intangible heritage status in this tense sociopolitical climate, in the interviews with the TMCT officers I was told that the government’s Alevi politics and heritage designation of Semah are completely separate processes, and that not political but “strictly cultural” reasons underlie such designation. In the words of a TMCT officer in charge of supervising the intangible heritage activities,

Almost all Alevi respondents, however, reject this emphasis on culture when describing Semah. What is stressed, time after time, by these respondents is that Semah is a religious practice for Alevis—just as Namaz is for Sunnis. For them, TMCT’s portrayal of Semah as a cultural activity is not a mere coincidence, but rather a deliberate political decision deriving from the ministry’s Sunni outlook that rejects the religious significance of Semah for Alevis. To substantiate these arguments, the following section examines the extent to which Alevi claims and voices were silenced in Semah’s heritage designation process, and in what ways this relates to recent government efforts to define Alevism within Sunni Islam.

Heritage-Making of Semah

When asked whether Semah’s UNESCO nomination conforms to the ICH Convention’s community participation criteria, the TMCT personnel affirmed that it was pursued with the active participation and full support of Alevi community representatives. I was told that the ministry first identified various Alevi organizations, local authorities, and academicians as the community representatives and asked their written opinions on Semah’s nomination for the Representative List, as well as on the measures to be implemented for its safeguarding. According to the ministry personnel, these bodies responded positively to the heritage nomination of Semah and provided views on how to safeguard it, which were taken into account in drafting the nomination file. Subsequently, the ministry invited these bodies to a meeting on 4 August 2009 (henceforth, the August meeting) to finalize the nomination file and to inform them about the specifics of UNESCO’s intangible heritage program. For the TMCT personnel, the meeting was a success in that participants evaluated and approved the draft nomination file. One of the meeting organizers explained:

The nomination file submitted to UNESCO also affirmed that community representatives were included in the decision-making process and their statements of informed consent were presented along with the nomination file as a proof of their support of the TMCT. The Intergovernmental Committee took into consideration the Alevis’ participation to the process when evaluating the nomination, and decided to inscribe Semah to the UNESCO Representative List on the basis that “the communities concerned were consulted during the nomination process, and provided their free, prior and informed consent to the element’s nomination.”^{Footnote 62}

During the interviews, however, I surprisingly discovered that among 13 interviewed Alevi organizations, only two had actually supported the TMCT’s studies on Semah’s UNESCO designation.^{Footnote 63} The remaining organizations (including the nationwide ones) either rejected the nomination right from the start or subsequently withdrew their support from the TMCT claiming that it had misrepresented the meanings and values they attribute to Semah, and submitted the nomination without their consent and knowledge. A closer look at Semah’s nomination process better explains these concerns.

To begin with, 6 out of 13 Alevi organizations reject the heritage listing of Semah in principle, arguing that the ritual does not constitute an intangible heritage. In the interviews, representatives from these organizations explained that Semah is neither a performance art nor a folk dance but a component of their worship; and thus labeling it as intangible heritage is inappropriate to its sacred character, just as it would be inappropriate to consider Sunni Namaz or Christian rituals such as Baptism and Confession as intangible heritage. This view is well summarized by one of the Alevi respondents.

These concerns were also communicated to the TMCT during the preparation process of the nomination file, when an Istanbul-based Alevi foundation sent a written statement to the ministry about a month before the August meeting opposing Semah’s nomination on the grounds that it is a religious worship rather than an intangible heritage. A representative from this foundation also participated in the meeting and explained their reasons for rejecting the nomination. Other Alevi organizations opposing the nomination neither sent written statements to the TMCT nor participated in the August meeting, and they were unaware of being cited as community representatives in the nomination file.^{Footnote 64}

The problem lay elsewhere for the five other Alevi organizations rejecting the UNESCO award. When asked about their organizations’ attitudes toward Semah’s identification as intangible heritage, respondents from these organizations explained that while Semah is definitely a worship ritual, it could as well constitute an intangible heritage, because religion is an aspect of culture. These organizations did not reject the TMCT’s proposal right away, and they participated in the August meeting thinking that the UNESCO award could facilitate international recognition of Alevism or that they could receive some financial and technical assistance from UNESCO or the TMCT in Semah-related activities. They, however, withdrew support from the process when they saw that the ministry excluded them from the decision making, and ignoring the religious significance of Semah, represented it as a folk dance. As expressed by one of the August meeting participants,

Indeed, while the TMCT personnel hailed the August meeting as a success, Alevi meeting participants had a quite different story to tell, based upon the claim that they were misled in the meeting by the ministry. These respondents mentioned that the TMCT personnel tended to impose their opinions on the participants and misinformed them with regard to the specifics of the nomination in order to get their approval. According to a meeting participant, for instance, the ministry personnel (wrongly) claimed that it was actually UNESCO that sought to protect Semah, and the initial proposal to Semah’s heritage nomination came from the organization.

Most significantly, these respondents remarked that the TMCT submitted the nomination without their consent and knowledge, and their objections to the content of the nomination file were unrecognized. In fact, the outcome of the August meeting was not conclusive, and further talks were planned. Meeting participants explained that the majority of participants disapproved of the content of the draft nomination file because Semah was represented out of its religious context. When no consensus was reached, the meeting ended with the parties agreeing to postpone the nomination until an indefinite time when further discussion could take place. Expecting the ministry to notify them about the whereabouts of such subsidiary meeting, Alevi organizations instead learned from the mainstream media about the UNESCO award. One of the meeting participants explained:

Surprisingly, I discovered during the interviews that not all the meeting participants who had their signatures on the letter of informed consent were actually aware of this fact.^{Footnote 65} I realized this when I asked the aforementioned respondent why he had chosen to sign the letter.

In my research, I learned that two other meeting participants signed the letter of informed consent thinking it was a participant sheet. In one instance, a respondent became very suspicious of my project’s legitimacy, as she could not figure out how I knew about her participation in the meeting. When I mentioned to her the letter of informed consent that is available on the ICH Convention’s official website and showed her a copy with her signature on it, she was very surprised as she only recalled signing a participant sheet before the meeting had begun. Even the representative of the foundation, who participated in the meeting to argue against Semah’s heritage nomination, has a signature on the letter of informed consent. During our interview, this representative explained to me that he learned about this situation when the foundation sent another written statement to oppose Semah’s UNESCO status to the TMCT after its heritage designation. The foundation was subsequently informed by the ministry that their representative had actually approved the nomination by signing the consent letter. As he furiously stated,

In the course of the interviews it also became clear that the ministry did not revise the content of the nomination file according to the requests of Alevi representatives before submitting it to UNESCO. One of the main objections was to the description that categorizes Semah into two groups: İçeri (private) Semah, representing its religious performance as part of the Cem ceremony, and Dışarı (public) Semah conducted “for the purposes of teaching the semah culture to the younger generations or simply entertaining.”^{Footnote 66} None of the Alevi respondents, including the ones who mentioned their support for the ministry’s studies on Semah, accepted this categorical division, arguing that such a separation is inappropriate to Semah’s religious significance and paves the way for its folklorization. A Semah instructor expressed the common feeling of all Alevi respondents when he remarked that each Semah performance is of religious significance:

Currently, almost all Alevi organizations offer free Semah training courses that are especially popular among the Alevi youth. Alevi respondents mentioned these courses as the primary instruments for Alevi religious education and criticized the TMCT for not recognizing their main purpose, which is to familiarize Alevi youth with the details of their faith other than to teach them the Semah culture. A Semah instructor, for instance, explained that teaching how to turn Semah constitutes just a small part of the course he offers: “If I teach how to turn Semah for 15 minutes, I explain for an hour and a half the foundations of Alevi belief, Cem ceremony, and meaning of Alevism.”

What’s more, all Alevi respondents resolutely rejected the statement, “Semah is conducted for the purposes of entertainment.” As one respondent put it succinctly, “Just go and tell any of us that Semah is a form of entertainment, if you want to break our hearts.” It is true that as one of the most powerful symbols of Alevi identity, Semah has recently gained a growing popularity among Alevis. This has led to the emergence of various Semah groups across Turkey (most of which are affiliated with Alevi organizations) that came to perform staged Semah shows with varying choreographies and specific costumes in all kinds of events attended by Alevis, including festivals, charity dinners, music concerts, and even weddings, television shows, political party rallies, and business openings. Alevi respondents mentioned the conduct of Semah at some community events (such as festivals and charity dinners) as a significant means to create stronger bonds among Alevis. They, however, rejected its performance in events unrelated to the Alevi cause (such as business openings and political party rallies), arguing that these performances serve for the commercialization and folklorization of Semah. Moreover, in the interviews, I encountered several discussions on how Alevis have been increasingly voicing concerns about the adverse effects of these performances on Semah’s sacred content and spiritual purpose. The following long excerpt from an interview conducted with the president of an Istanbul-based Alevi foundation is worth quoting as it explains how this growing unease is a consequence of Alevi organizations’ joint efforts.

As of July 2013, the TMCT implemented none of the safeguarding measures mentioned in the nomination file.^{Footnote 67} Moreover, while the file clearly states the TMCT’s commitment to provide financial and technical support to Alevi organizations on Semah-related activities, Semah’s heritage designation has brought no such support. Following the designation, two Alevi foundations applied to the TMCT for funding for a joint Semah project. The project would have been a 10-month-long international event featuring various Semah symposiums, workshops, and festivals to foster international dialogue among academicians, researchers, and Semah performers. Their application, however, was rejected without any explanation as to why. As one of the respondents that prepared the project remarked, they learned through unofficial channels that “some forces within the government rejected providing financial support to them.” In another instance, one of the respondents asked the ministry’s assistance in finding a Semah instructor, only to be informed that she should contact the Konya Mevlevi group to send them a “Sema” instructor.^{Footnote 68} As she further stated, “It is a real shame to confuse Semah and Sema. They are supposed to be in charge of protecting Semah; I never contacted them again.”

Overall, while both the TMCT personnel and Semah’s nomination file claim the full support and cooperation of Alevi community representatives, the preceding discussion shows that the nomination process had been actually pursued without their consent and knowledge. For Alevi respondents opposing the process, their exclusion from the decision making is neither accidental nor a consequence of an organizational failure, but is essentially related to the TMCT’s Sunni outlook that positions Alevism within Sunni Islam. A participant to the August meeting, for instance, claimed that the TMCT’s Sunni mindset had already become evident in the meeting.

The ministry is accused of adopting the position of Sunni authorities on Semah, according to whom Semah cannot constitute an alternate worship ritual to Namaz, because the latter is a fundamental pillar of Islam that is required of all Muslims (including Alevis) according to Islamic principles. Indeed, the following statement of the former president of the DRA, Ali Bardakoğlu, is exemplary of this approach:

The respondents opposing the heritage making of Semah believe that the ministry echoes this logic by rejecting the meanings and values they attribute to Semah. In the end, acceptance of Semah as a religious ritual compatible to Namaz would be akin to the recognition of Alevism as a distinct form of Islam. For these respondents, then, Semah’s heritage designation is a strategic move to Sunnify Semah and plays into the ongoing government efforts to redefine Alevism within Sunni Islam. As one of the respondents put it succinctly: “All these Alevi initiatives and heritage declarations are, in fact, designed as parts of a package program implemented by the government to create its own Alevi.” Another respondent summarized the common feelings of those rejecting the UNESCO award as follows:

Concluding Remarks

Application of the ICH Convention’s community participation criteria might have limited success especially in countries struggling with diversity issues like Turkey. As the preceding discussion has made clear, the content of the nomination files and consent letters submitted to UNESCO might be incorrect or misleading when it comes to community involvement. The nomination files, which claim to have the approval of community representatives, could be submitted without their knowledge or when they disapprove the content of the file. What’s more, the validity of “informed” consent letters becomes highly questionable when community representatives are unaware of signing them.

The process through which Semah was inscribed into the Representative List neither reflected Alevis’ own sense of identity nor conformed to the meanings they attributed to the ritual. This situation, however, was unknown to the Intergovernmental Committee when listing Semah, because the ICH Convention’s governing bodies and its secretariat had no direct contact with Alevi community representatives at any stage of the listing process. The ICH Convention was meant to depart from top-down heritage management by promoting community participation in decision making, but the administration and implementation of the convention is completely in the hands of States Parties. This dominant role of the state in decision making prevents culture bearers from having an actual voice in the convention. As community participation remains a state-sponsored activity, the decisions of how the “community” is to be defined, who are to be selected as community representatives, and whether or to what extent their opinions are to be represented in the nomination files rest entirely with the state heritage authorities. These are serious limitations when one considers intangible heritage within the wider framework of the state, national identity building, and minority issues.

The case of Semah clearly demonstrates that the ICH Convention needs to come up with better measures for ensuring genuine community participation, where culture bearers could take part directly in decision making without the intermediation of state heritage authorities. This issue also came up in the interviews with several Alevi respondents who complained about not having a direct voice in the decision making processes of the convention. In the words of the president of an Istanbul-based Alevi foundation,

The Intergovernmental Committee should devote greater attention to this problem of state-sponsored community participation and should explore ways to facilitate direct communication and information exchange between UNESCO and culture bearers. The committee, for instance, could modify the nomination procedure and ask community representatives to submit informed consent forms directly to UNESCO’s intangible heritage section (which assumes the function of the convention’s secretariat), if they have the possibility to do so. It could also consider developing mechanisms to allow community representatives to contact the secretariat directly if they have any questions or concerns regarding the nomination and safeguarding processes.

I do not suggest that such minor modifications in the convention’s procedures would be sufficient to overcome complex political problems surrounding top-down intangible heritage decisions. In the end, it is the state authorities that decide on the cultural traditions to be nominated for the Intangible Heritage Lists and the communities and their representatives to be identified with them. Overall, the convention needs to change its state-centric approach on intangible heritage to a community-centric one and seek ways to facilitate greater control of culture bearers over their intangible heritage.