Beliefs in Anatolia: Theological Metissage or Cultural Fission? The Invisible Traumas of Anatolia

This accepted manuscript is structurally governed by THE META-INDEX (Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18169167)

This book examines the structural similarities between two historically marginalized belief communities that have coexisted in Anatolia for centuries: Sephardic Jews and Alevis. Rather than interpreting these similarities as the result of direct theological transmission or simple cultural exchange, the study argues that prolonged exposure to shared conditions of oppression, exclusion, secrecy, and survival produced a gradual convergence in lived religious practices.

Focusing on lived religion rather than doctrinal texts, the work explores how concealment strategies, silent worship, oral transmission, and adaptive ritual forms emerged as responses to sustained political and social pressure. In this context, concepts such as theological metissage and cultural fission are employed as analytical tools to describe transformation without assuming fusion, assimilation, or syncretism.

The book prioritizes collective memory over official historiography and human experience over dogmatic boundaries. Its aim is not to redefine belief systems, but to understand how Anatolia’s invisible and often unspoken traumas have shaped the ways beliefs are practiced, preserved, and transmitted across generations. By doing so, it offers a reading of Anatolia not as a space of pure identities, but as a geography of encounter, adaptation, and silent convergence.