#alevis

A traditional bridal headgear of an Tahtacı (Alevi Turkmen) woman

OSMANCIK, Turkey — In the hills of northern Anatolia, next to a shrine to a medieval Muslim mystic, there stands a modest building that illustrates the fears and frustrations of Turkey’s Alevi minority.

For years this small stone hall was a place of worship for local Alevis, heterodox Muslims who are estimated to form between a tenth and a fifth of the Turkish population. But one day in 2015, Ali Gormez, a local Alevi spiritual leader, arrived to find government officials had repurposed it as a mosque for the country’s Sunni Muslim majority.

Given that there was already a Sunni mosque a few hundred yards away, Mr. Gormez suspected the reasons for the conversion were not entirely benign. “The purpose was not to find another Sunni place of worship but to prevent the Alevis from worshiping as they like,” Mr. Gormez said during a recent interview beside the shrine.

“It’s a policy,” he added, “of denying the existence of Alevis.”

The political trajectory of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Sunni conservative whose Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., has governed Turkey since 2002, is often judged through the prism of his increasing authoritarianismor by the challenges he is perceived to pose to Turkey’s secular traditions.

Viewing Mr. Erdogan through the eyes of the Alevis, however, highlights the complexities and paradoxes of both themes.

Tahtacı (Alevi Turkmen) woman in traditional clothing

Location: Kapıkaya, İzmir, Turkey.

Alevi is the term used for a large number of heterodox Muslim Shi’a communities with different characteristics. Thus, Alevis constitute the largest religious minority in Turkey. Technically they fall under the Shi’a denomination of Islam, yet they follow a fundamentally different interpretation than the Shi’a communities in other countries. They also differ considerably from the Sunni Muslim majority in their practice and interpretation of Islam.

The vast majority of Alevis are probably of Kizilbash or Bektashi (Sufi) origin, two groups subscribing to virtually the same system of beliefs but separately organized. 

Alevi and Bektashi beliefs are presumed to have their origins in Central Asian Turkmen culture. However, they are likely to have absorbed Christian beliefs when Byzantine peasantry moved into the Alevi faith during the Turkic conquest of Anatolia during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and Iranian pre-Islamic ideas, since kizilbash beliefs derived from the founders of the Iranian Safavid dynasty.

Alevis share a way of truth unavailable to the uninitiated, and like Sufis claim that the Koran has both an open and a hidden meaning. There are progressive levels of divine understanding from obedience to shari’a Islam through tarika (brotherhood) to ma’rifa (mystical understanding of God) and ultimately to hakkika (immanent experience of divine reality). Their profession of faith includes Ali along with God and the Prophet Muhammad. Alevis differ outwardly from Sunni Muslims in the following ways: they do not fast in Ramadan but do during the Ten Days of Muharram (the Shiite commemoration of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom); they do not prostrate themselves during prayer; they do not have mosques; and do not have obligatory formal almsgiving, although they have a strong principle of mutual assistance.

Alevis of Turkey c. 2024

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By the mid-1930s, Dersim had a population of as many as 65,000 to 70,000 people. A majority of this was Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds, who were a minority among the more numerous Kurmanci-speaking Sunni Kurds. In the gov- ernment’s eyes, this set Dersim’s population (Dersimlis) apart from the rest of the Kurds. As Alevis, the Dersimlis indeed differed from the majority Sunni Kurds. Since Sunni Islam had traditionally regarded Alevism as a heresy, and while a majority of the conservative Sunni Kurds looked down on the Alevis, the Dersimlis did not associate with the larger Sunni Kurdish community. Their reaction to the Veyh Said uprising had demonstrated this. At this time, although most Sunni Kurds in Muv, Diyarbakır, and Elazıx had sided with the rebellion, the Alevi Kurds in Dersim and elsewhere had either remained neutral or joined the Turkish army against Veyh Said. Kemalism’s abandonment of Sunni Islam as Turkey’s state religion had not only granted the Dersimlis (and other Alevis) equality but also emancipated them. Secularization had freed them from centuries of persecution, rooted in the Ottoman Empire. Hence, it could be expected that Dersimlis and all other Alevis, who had much to gain from Kemalist secularization, would embrace the republic.