Sıraç Sosyopolitik Hareketi ve Anşa Bacılı Ocağı

Sıraç, known as an Aşiret, is a Kızılbaş/Alevi community of Beydili Turkoman living in villages ofTokat, Yozgat, Sivas and Amasya in central Anatolia. Most of the Siraçi villages in Tokat-Zile andYozgat-Çekerek belong to the ocak of Anşa bacı that began to institutionalize a hundred and fiftyyears ago. Sıraç Turkmens set up a new ocak during the leadership of Anşa bacı at the end of the nineteenthcentury. The 19th century, when the ocak was founded, coincided with a transition period inwhich the Ottoman Empire implemented Westernization projects, underwent a process of rapid, radicaland intertwined structural and cultural change and faced with crises related to it. This study aimsto explore socio-political movements initiated by Sıraçis at the beginning of the nineteenth centuryagainst both Kızılbaş ocaks and central authority and resulting in schism and establishment of a newocak as a process according to V. Turner’s approach of social drama. How the movement initiated bySıraçis was structured as a separate and new ocak is tried to be pointed out. The institutionalizationof the ocak of Anşa Bacılı was analysed according to the data obtained from the Ottoman archival documents and the ethnographic fieldwork carried out in villages in the Zile/Tokat and Çekerek/Yozgat between 2010 and 2012. As a result, it was concluded that Sıraç sociopolitical movement wasinstitutionalized as a new and separate ocak through the stage of breach, crisis and redress.