“The Narcissism of the Minor Difference” and Religious Violence

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relations between Sunnis and Alevis in Turkey. Of Turkey's two major religious groups, the Alevis and the Sunnis, the Alevis represent a minority corresponding to approximately twenty percent of the population and considered by the Sunnis as heterodox. It is generally recognized that their attitudes concerning food, alcohol, and certain religious practices—like their non-respect of Ramadan—differ from stricter Sunni practices. As such, daily interaction between Sunnis and Alevis is marked by a certain hostility that is expressed primarily through “friction” that helps to maintain the dividing line between them and reinforces fairly strict denominational endogamy. The chapter then describes the violence suffered by Alevis over the past thirty years. Grounding the analysis in the “narcissism of the small difference” and the concept of “identification,” it argues that unless research in this area takes the unconscious into account, its results are doomed to remain somewhat uninterpretable.