Editorial of Special Issue of National Identities: Alevism as an ethno-religious identity: Contested boundaries

No abstract for editorial but this is the opening paragraph: This special issue on Alevism and trans/national Alevi identity critically engages with the relationship between religion, ethnicity and national identity. The core issues are as follows: • how ethnicity and religion are conceptualised for a relatively invisible ethnic group in different national contexts; • how religion and ethnicity intersect when Alevism is both a faith and an ethnic identity, especially when conceptions of that identity are contested; • how identity is shaped through state policies within different national policy contexts and how etic definitions of minority communities are constructed by the state or other agencies with the power to impose them on the community in contrast to the emic or self-definitions of Aleviness from within the Alevi community; • how despite the fragmented, heterogeneous nature of Alevi communities, there is also a sense of a single, transnational imaginary community, at least for the purposes of political assimilation/integration and activism; • how education and other arenas of political, religious and cultural engagement at local, national and transnational levels create the possibilities, both positively and negatively, for future action/policy to situate minority ethnic communities.