Dr. Hakki Gurkas

Kennesaw State University

Bio

Hakkı Gürkaş is a Professor of History at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA. He teaches courses on the Middle East, Central Asia, and world history. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University, Indiana, USA, in 2008. His research program is based on secularization, folk Islam, festive culture, and nation-formation in the Middle Eastern and Central Asian societies.

Sacralization of Nature in the Age of Ecological Crisis: Environmental Sustainability and Alevi-Bektaşi Traditions in Turkey

Abstract

This paper explores how Alevi-Bektaşi traditions offer an alternative paradigm for conceptualizing the human–nature relationship through the sacralization of the environment. Nature under modernity has intensified global ecological crises. Reviving and rearticulating cosmologies that sacralize nature may offer not only ethical constraints on human action but also cultural resources for sustainability. Alevi-Bektaşi traditions offer a spiritual ethics of care rooted in historical relationships with place and present alternative models of coexistence with the natural world.