Starting Small: Giving Alevis Their Rights
The Municipality Assembly of Kusadasi, a small town on the Aegean, has recognized the Alevi Cem House in its district as a place of worship and therefore its water bill will be charged at the reduced rate given to mosques. (click here) The recommendation was made by the town’s AKP mayor Fuat Akdogan and ratified by an assembly composed also of CHP and MHP members and independents.
This may seem a small thing, but is an important step in official state recognition of the Alevis as a distinct Islamic community and giving them the rights that go along with that, rather than shoehorning them into the “Sunni” category, forcing their children to learn exclusively about Sunnism in school, and recognizing their cem houses only as cultural centers, rather than as houses of worship. This discriminatory treatment by the state encourages popular discrimination against Alevis. Persecution of Alevis goes back to Ottoman times.
Alevis are a syncretistic minority Muslim sect that combines elements of Sunni, Shi’a, and pre-Islamic beliefs and rituals. They do not worship in mosques, but celebrate their own distinctive rituals (cem) in cem houses. There are estimated to be aorund 20 million Alevis in Turkey, a sizable part of the population. Many Kurds are Alevi, although there are also non-Kurdish Alevi and non-Alevi Kurds.
Fevzi Gümüs of the Alevi Bektashi Federation and president of the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association, said (excerpt from the article linked above): “It is very important that the Municipality Assembly took this decision; it will help change the negative treatmentt he local administrations have been carrying out towards the Alevi belief centers.” …
“The pressure during the ruling AKP has increased. They are forcing building of mosques in Alevi villages.They assign Sunni religious heads. Cem Houses are still not recognized as legal places of worship. Alevi children still have to go through the mandatory religious courses.”
This is a step in the wrong direction. The right direction would have been to charge the mosque the regular rate also. Can anyone explain to me what harmful activity I am doing in my home-office that causes me to to pay the full price? I hereby demand that computer ccience and productive work ought to be recognized as a religion.
Actually, one part of me agrees with you, Bulent, and the other part thinks of the tax-exemption for non-profit corporations in the US. I know there have been vakifs in Turkey; I wish that a comparative study existed. The US approach is brilliant imo in that it separates political activity from non-profit purposes (though the ‘education’ purpose is open to abuse), and at the same time, allows many a secular purpose to be pursued by privileges accorded to a church. That a church is a kind of corporation in the eyes of the law is another interesting thing of course.