Alevi Anger Boils Over in Ankara
Simmering anger in Ankara’s iconic Alevi neighborhood of Tuzlucayir suggests that the prime minister might be too late in addressing Alevi grievances.
ANKARA — It is a bizarre sight. On a sealed-off street on Ankara’s outskirts, riot police equipped with a tear-gas-firing vehicle watch over the construction of a religious shrine, guarding the site from the very people for whom it is intended.
Despite two weeks of street clashes earlier in September, workers continue to toil at what will eventually be a complex housing a Sunni mosque next to a cemevi, an assembly house and place of worship for Alevis, Turkey’s largest and long-stigmatized religious minority.
Launched as a bridge-building initiative, the project in Tuzlucayir, a working-class Alevi neighborhood with a strong leftist tradition, has backfired badly. With Alevis already at the forefront of anti-government protests since June, the recent unrest has stoked fears that pressure is building along Turkey’s sectarian fault line.
In Tuzlucayir, residents make no distinction between the powerful community of the Sunni preacher Fethullah Gulen funding the new complex and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has given its blessing. Mistrust in both runs deep. A prominent Alevi figure who teamed up with Gulen to promote the project is widely viewed as a “sellout.” In what is touted as an olive branch, the locals see instead a stick for herding them into the mosque in a stealth move to assimilate them into the Sunni culture and faith.
