ANKARA, Turkey — In November, a petty argument on a construction site in Bolu, northwest Turkey, abruptly turned violent as several dozen stick-wielding men swarmed on a small work team. “Strike the Communist Alevis!” Huseyin Dogan heard the assailants shout before a blow to the head knocked him unconscious. Not only did their employer do nothing to protect the Alevi workers, he unceremoniously laid them off the following day.

“It was all because of our [Alevi] identity. I thought they were coming to kill us,” Dogan, told Al-Monitor by telephone after a stint in hospital with a brain injury. “It was only our third day on the job. We didn’t even know those people.”

The attack in Bolu was the latest in a string of recent incidents that have stoked fears among Turkey’s long-ostracized Alevis that discrimination is creeping up to dangerous levels. Community leaders put the blame on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, charging that he is recklessly playing the sectarian card for political ends, keen to keep the ranks tight in his Sunni base. They say there is a systematic effort to vilify Alevis, coupled with a drive to purge them from the public sector. Some claim that discrimination has become so palpable in everyday life that many Alevis now worry not about their religious rights, but about simply keeping their jobs.

Estimated at about 15% of Turkey’s population, Alevis are no strangers to discrimination and violence. They were persecuted as heretics in Ottoman times over their distinct faith, which venerates the Imam Ali. A deep-rooted fear of Sunni bigotry has made the community a staunch defender of the secular republic. Yet Alevis have remained fixtures on the state’s watch list due to their strong leftist leanings and ethnically Kurdish segments. Dozens of Alevis perished in political massacres in the late 1970s, and more than 30 were burned alive in a hotel by an Islamist mob as recently as 1993.