US embassy cable - 05ANKARA4456

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 004456 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/01/2015 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, PHUM, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S SOUTHEAST: ALEVI COMMUNITIES SEEK HIGHER 
PROFILE 
 
Classified By: (U) Polcounselor John Kunstadter; reasons: E.O. 12958 1. 
4 (b,d). 
 
1. (U) This is a Consulate Adana cable. 
 
2. (C)  Summary: Alevis in southeastern Turkey of varying 
ethnic backgrounds recently have offered useful insight into 
the ongoing Anatolia-wide debate about the future shape of 
their faith and how they feel that the EU accession process 
might impact on that community-wide discourse. End Summary. 
 
3. (C)  In a July 19 meeting in Adana with visiting Turkey 
desk officer Baxter Hunt, a Kurdish (not Zaza) Alevi contact 
who was born in Elazig explained his background as an active 
officer in the Cukurova region's Pir Sultana organization and 
past national Pir Sultana executive board.  He said that he 
was a self-described modernist in the current community 
debate.  He said that there were considerable Alevi desires, 
if necessary, through the European Court of Human Rights and 
explicit EU demands to Turkey in the accession process, that 
the  Religious Affairs Department either be dissolved or 
changed to include support for Turkey's Alevis.  The Alevi 
contact said that what he counted as Turkey's 12 
million-member Alevi community will resist what he called the 
"Sunni Religious Affairs Department's assimilation policy." 
(Note: This figure is a matter of debate, even among Alevis. 
An Alevi contact in Diyarbakir on July 26 asserted to AMCON 
Adana PO that there were 25 to 30 million Alevis in Anatolia, 
with other Alevi friends of his suggesting later that such a 
number is exaggerated even if it included the many Alevis who 
do not regularly go to a cem or dede-led home services in 
urban areas, but that there are many more Alevis than the 6 
to 7 million that Sunni activists claim.  Official but 
confidential Turkish State figures, based on detailed family 
 
SIPDIS 
registers, show seven million Alevis in Turkey. End Note) 
 
4. (C)  He also described a generational discussion which has 
developed within the Alevi community, which he described as 
unique to Anatolia, as to whether the Alevi faith should have 
a place in the Islamic community.  He said that older, more 
traditional Alevis, even though one would not find a Koran in 
their house or their praying in a mosque, still considered 
Aleviism as a faith with its roots in Islam.  He noted, 
however, for example, that almost all Alevis feel that the 
fourth caliph, Osman, altered the original text of the Koran 
and that they therefore reject it as a spiritual guideline. 
Younger Alevis, he said, increasingly see their Alevi faith 
as one based on humanism which "has no room to grow and 
express itself if bound by the broad confines of Islam or 
interpreted primarily by dedes (traditional Alevi community 
religious leaders)."  The Alevi contact also asserted that 
Alevis need groups of at least twelve to perform some common 
and important rituals, which usually are performed in a cem 
evi, and as a result, require group rights as well as 
individual freedoms to worship.  He said that he had pointed 
this out to Council of Europe and European parliament figures 
in Strasbourg in late 2004 meetings. 
 
5. (C)  Somewhat in contrast, Diyarbakir-based Alevi contacts 
from the Pir Sultana association described their perception 
of the debate, which they agreed was ongoing in the Alevi 
faith in slightly different terms.  They explained that the 
Diyarbakir Alevi community, whose active membership stood at 
about 12,000 strong, had mixed roots in Zaza "Cult of the 
Angels" Alevism, Turkmen practices from the late Ottoman era 
whose community migrated to Diyarbakir and southeast Anatolia 
before the First World War, and many Kurdish Alevis who speak 
the Kermanji variant of Kurdish, and have ritual traditions 
akin to their western Anatolian Turkish-speaking kin.  All 
lamented the lack of a cem evi in Diyarbakir and complained 
loudly about how a Diyarbakir municipal decision in 2003 had 
allotted them land for a cem evi, but that a new 
religious-affairs department-linked religious activities 
zoning board put in place in the governor's office during the 
AK party era had blocked any construction permits for the 
site, claming it suitable for a mosque which Alevis, as 
Muslims in the Religious Affairs Department's assessment, 
were free to attend. 
 
6. (C)  The Diyarbakir Pir Sultana officials, which included 
a Zaza-speaking Kurdish president; Kermanji-speaking Kurdish 
deputy president; a Turkmen Turkish-speaking secretary and a 
Turkmen Turkish and Arabic-speaking dede, said that they were 
harder line toward the Religious Affairs Department "policy 
of assimilation which Prime Minister Erdogan is trying to 
force on us."  They bristled when recalling past Erdogan 
characterizations of Aleviism as a culture rather than a 
religious faith and denounced an AKP government report to the 
EU referring to Alevis as minorities.  While one member 
asserted that there were as many practicing Alevis as Sunni 
hanafi muslims (not everyone in the group agreed with this 
assertion), but you just could not count them in mosque 
gatherings, all agreed that the AKP government language was 
intended to marginalize their community in the EU's and other 
outsiders' eyes.  Unlike the Cem Foundation, which they said 
had called for either the religious affairs department's 
dissolution or its inclusion of a new and autonomous Alevi 
branch, they said that the Pir Sultana foundation would 
accept nothing less than the end of the religious affairs 
department and its support for Sunni imams and compulsory 
religious education in Turkish public schools. 
 
7. (C)  The dede with the group also said that today's Alevi 
youth, after growing up with parents who had to hide their 
Alevi faith because of systematic state persecution in the 
1970's and 1980's (he pointed to a wall poster displaying a 
picture of the 37 Alevi intellectuals killed in an arson 
attack on a hotel in Sivas in 1993 while saying this), were 
exploring their faith with more vigor than possible in 
Anatolia in the last 20-30 years and taking pride in their 
Alevi identity.  That said, who would be the next 
generation's dedes, determined by blood line, is still 
unclear, he said.  He described Alevi youth as very actively 
debating issues whether the Koran should be on an Alevi table 
(he said older Alevis accepted the Koran as an element of 
their religion's roots, but not a determining one), how Islam 
might confine the future of Islam, and whether and how Alevis 
should seek definitive religious rights for their community 
from the Turkish government.  The dede said that he was not 
optimistic that the current AKP government which was so 
strongly steeped in Sunni hanafi tradition would relent in 
its "assimilation" policy.  They cannot accept us because of 
independence of Alevi religious strictures and customs (like 
use of music, especially the saz, a lute-like instrument), 
gender equality, past political support of Ataturk, and use 
of cem evis rather than mosques. 
 
8. (C)  Like their Adana counterparts, the Diyarbakir Alevi 
groups described a feeling of empowerment first from 
Anatolian diaspora Alevis of different customs who now lived 
in western Europe and closely followed and actively 
participated in the Alevi-wide debate about its future path. 
They also said that these groups had offered them insight 
into the potential for change and autonomy they could win if 
working with EU governments to advocate religious freedom in 
Anatolia.  This realization both strengthened their resolve 
in the face of perceived sunni persecution and rekindled 
interest and energy in charting a new course for the 
community which was based on their potential rather than the 
limits of what Sunnis in Anatolia were prepared to tolerate. 
MCELDOWNEY