Alevis struggle for equal rights

Turkish Daily News with Associated Press - Ankara, Turkey

Sunday, December 10, 2006

‘They think we’re heretics because they don’t read the Koran well, they don’t understand it,’ says Akkaya, an Alevi prayer leader.

It's Sunday, and prayer leader Bektaş Akkaya is twanging a Turkish version of the electric banjo, working some 200 members of this country's largest non-Sunni group into a trance.

Women in headscarves slap their knees, swaying to the music and wiping tears from their eyes. A young man swings his arms wildly across his chest, his head gyrating like a bobblehead doll until he collapses.

Here, there is no imam, minaret or call to prayer. But for a large proportion of Turkey's 71 million people, this is Islam.

The worshippers are Alevis, followers of a faith rooted in the beliefs of Shia Islam but who diverge greatly from the Shiites in practice. The Alevis incorporate shamanistic traditions and do away with many customary Islamic practices, including the separation of men and women in prayer.

To many Sunni and Shiite traditionalists, they are considered heretics -- making them the target of discrimination in Turkey and a focus of interest for the European Union, which has made religious liberties a condition for Turkish membership.

Alevis say they only want to practice their religion without state interference or discrimination. They claim fundamentalists now gaining influence in Turkey are the ones who have lost their way -- by focusing more on austere rituals rather than the sincerity and depth of faith.

“They think we're heretics because they don't read the Koran well, they don't understand it,” says Akkaya. “If a servant of Allah says he's a servant of Allah, then he is.”

The plight of the Alevis was not mentioned in Pope Benedict XVI's pleas to improve the lot of religious minorities during his visit here last week. But because they are numerous -- Alevis represent at least a tenth of Turkey's population -- their fate may be the best indicator of this country's willingness to tolerate free religious practice.

Adherents of Alevism, which is mostly confined to Turkey, complain of discrimination in business and education, barriers to getting government jobs, forced assimilation through mandatory courses on Sunni Islam. They say they are denied funding from the powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet, which uses state funds for nearly 80,000 mosques, but views the cem evleri where Alevi ceremonies are held as illegitimate and un-Islamic.

“A Muslim prays in a mosque,” Ali Bardakoğlu, head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, said in an interview aired on Tuesday. He added that Turkey's problems with religious minorities were being over-inflated. “To say there's no religious freedom in Turkey by exaggerating some isolated problems that need to be solved with debate is unfair,” he said.

Earlier this year, he said the state did not have funds for “supporting mystical worship.”
Estimates of the number of Alevis vary, but by any measure they are significant. Alevis themselves claim to represent nearly a third of Turkey's Muslims -- or more than 20 million people.