Is Syria War Additional Spark To Alevi Protests in Turkey?
The war in Syria and the fallout from the Gezi Park demonstrations may be revealing a fault line in Turkish politics.
Unless appropriate measures are taken and an exit is found quickly, Turkey is going to be facing developments that will be at least as formidable to handle as its Kurdish issue. The almost instantaneous spillover of incidents at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University to Antakya [historical city of Antioch] near the Syrian border, the death of 23-year-old Ahmet Arikan on Sept. 9 in Antakya in obscure circumstances that may or not involve the police and the immediate, instant eruption of protests in Istanbul are all signals that the Alevis are heading to the streets.
Turkey’s Sunni-Alevi contention is never spoken about although its confrontation potential is always felt. Since last June’s Taksim-Gezi events, which for most constitute a milestone in the country’s politics, Alevi presence in the streets has become perceptible.
Kadikoy, the center of Istanbul’s Asian side, has become a night-long demonstration venue until the early hours of the morning, which the police disrupt with intensive pepper gas operations. The sudden eruption of Ankara’s major Alevi neighborhood of Tuzlucayir and Istanbul’s renowned militant Alevi neighborhood, Gazi, with non-stop demonstrations are seen as indicators of this new societal tension.
A tragic aspect has been that all the young men who lost their lives since the Taksim-Gezi events have been Alevis and three of them were Arab Alevis from Antakya. This may well be interpreted as "radioactive fallout" from the sectarian civil war in Syria.
