On Nov. 6, the head of Turkey’s Alevi-Bektashi Federation, Baki Duzgun, received a call from the police anti-terror department, inviting him to their headquarters in Ankara. Duzgun was in Istanbul that day, so a delegation representing the federation went to the meeting. It turned out the police had an alarming message to convey. “We got intelligence that the Islamic State [IS] is planning attacks on Alevi institutions. You have to take precautions,” they said.

That’s how Duzgun recounted the meeting to Al-Monitor. And was he surprised with the police’s message? “No,” he said, “not at all.”

The Alevi community and the Turkish public in general were hardly surprised either, for Alevis have been the target of a series of disturbing incidents in the past several years. The list is long, but even a short overview of the most recent ones explains why the alert came as no surprise.

To start with, unidentified people have been marking Alevi homes across Turkey for months. For Alevis, the marks are an ominous message with historical connotations. The 1978 massacre of Alevis in Maras was preceded by similar red "X" marks on Alevi homes. Four decades later, the marks are back.