Common Trends in Saint Veneration in Turkish Festive Culture in the Twentieth Century

This article examines the liminality of the revival of saint veneration between the sacred and secular in twentieth century Turkey. The museumization of saintly tombs and festivalization of saintly commemorations are components of an interactive process between secularizing policies and communal reclaiming of tradition. The processes of nation-building, secularization, and modernization that took place in Turkey deeply transformed the tradition of saint veneration. The most visible effect of this historical process was the transformation of prominent mausoleums into museums, like the mausoleums of Rumi in Konya, Haji Bektash Veli in Hacıbektaş, and Nasreddin Hodja in Akşehir. The secularist, modernist official culture reinvented prominent religious figures as rationalist and humanist national heroes and allowed people to visit their tombs in a secular environment as a part of the national cultural heritage. Large numbers of people gathering at festivals, commemorations, and other festal events contested the national narratives of “modern” identity offered to them at the state-controlled spaces and revived their traditions in novel and liminal ways. The state-induced rupture between the protective saint and people led the local populations to embrace the liminal space between the sacred and the secular by initiating ambiguous festive practices commemorating their principal saints.