Word: alevi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...None of that has mollified secularists. Hard-liners suspect the AKP of secretly wanting to turn Turkey into an Iranian-style theocracy. Moderates dispute that but are concerned about the AKP's failure to recognize religious minorities like the Alevi, its abandonment of plans to draw up a more democratic constitution (currently a holdover from military rule), and its conservative social policies on issues like women's status. It is these worries the government now needs to appease. "With the court case behind us, Turkey now needs to turn to its real agenda," says Alpay. "The Prime Minister needs...
...Aykan Erdemir, assistant professor of sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, argues that the treatment of the Alevi is a crucial litmus test that Turkey is failing. "The [Alevi] are not only offering an alternative, more Western-ready version of Islam," he says. "They also show that Sunni conservatives in power in Turkey are in fact extremely bigoted and spreading hate language...
...disdain of Turkey's Sunni authorities may explain why many Alevi venerate the country's secularist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In his separation of mosque and state, they finally found freedom from discrimination. But that eroded under subsequent governments, often violently. As recently as 1993, a group of 33 prominent Alevi poets, writers and musicians were burned to death by a fundamentalist Sunni mob in a hotel in eastern Turkey...
...centuries, the Alevi response to persecution has been to worship in secret, while trying to pass as Sunni. Amid the political liberalization that has accompanied Turkey's efforts to join the European Union, however, many Alevi have begun emerging from the shadows. At the Karacaahmet Sultan shrine on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, the cemevi runs entirely on donations to the tune of $159,000 a year. Volunteers teach traditional Alevi music and dance, while the group's pro bono lawyers fight for Alevi rights in court. Last year, an Alevi parent, angered by compulsory religion classes his teenage...
...Upstairs at the Karacaahmet Sultan shrine, an Alevi leader named Muharrem Ercan sits behind his desk in his smoke-filled office. He's confident, he says, that the Alevi are on the winning side. "We solved the issue of whether Islam could be tolerant 750 years ago," he says. "It's the rest of Turkey that has to catch...