Turkey’s Alevis: Wish you were not here

Mr Erdogan now has a golden opportunity to prove he was honest when he spoke like the Sufi he is probably not. He can amend the Constitution, like he did to remove the campus ban on the headscarf, in order to grant more religious freedoms to millions of Turks who are fellow Muslims, but with a touch of divergence from his own Islam.

I have a simple proposal with which we can easily test which religious freedoms Mr. Erdogan should prioritize as he loves to talk about “the nation’s will” and “the majority” in defense of his often deceptive rhetoric. The number of female students who wear a headscarf but must remove or cover it on campuses, and others who are qualified to enrol at university but have dropped out because of the ban, can easily be found, simply by asking them to petition. I would guess the number must be anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000.

The second part of the experiment will be easier. The Alevis who demand “broader religious freedoms” can do the same; petition. That number must be in the range of 5 million to 15 million. Now, where is the majority? Which one of the two religious problems is “bigger?” If Mr. Erdogan’s government, “which is at equal distance to every faith,” really cares about religious freedoms for all, not just for some, it can always find the necessary facts and figures as a basis for drafting new legislation.

What do Alevis want? Their demands are not monolithic. Most of them would agree that they request official recognition, of both their faith and their prayer houses. And why would Mr. Erdogan fiercely fight a war in favor of the Sunni headscarf, which is not a commandment in the Koran, but not raise a finger for Alevi prayers and rituals? Simple.

Most pious Sunnis like Mr. Erdogan privately think the Alevi faith is a degenerated, corrupted branch of Islam, and that Islam should remain purely Sunni. Some despise the Alevi faith and its followers, and some pretend to respect it but privately despise it. I have known observant Sunnis who confessed, “They would prefer even Jews to Alevis because the followers of Prophet Ali are a perverted lot.” It is double discrimination; Jews are bad, but Alevis are even worse! I remember an elderly Sunni man once preaching to me that, “The Alevis are not Muslims!”

Some 50,000 Alevis, who peacefully demonstrated last weekend in Ankara, demanded, among other things, mosques should not be built in their villages. If there are as many Alevis who officially subscribe to that demand, as there are female students demanding the removal of the ban on headscarf, would Mr. Erdogan give orders against the construction of mosques in Alevi villages, like he did against the campus ban? I bet he would not.

The Alevis are a nuisance for Mr. Erdogan and his Sunni missionaries, no matter how much, for pragmatic reasons, they try to look calm over the increasingly explosive matter. They wish Alevis did not exist at all. So, they cannot deliver on Alevi demands for broader religious freedoms.

The Alevis, together with non-Muslim minorities of Turkey, stand as living proof of Mr. Erdogan’s unconvincing rhetoric. The facts are there, they are just too plain; Firstly Mr. Erdogan does not defend religious freedoms, but defends more freedoms for Sunni Islam and for the half-religious, half-political symbols that stand for Sunni Islam. Secondly he is NOT, and CANNOT be at equal distance to all faiths.
I promise, I shall write, “I was wrong about Mr. Erdogan’s religious freedoms,” 500 times in this column if he grants religious rights and recognition demanded by Alevis and non-Muslims of Turkey.

If Mr. Erdogan did not discriminate against non-Sunni faiths and violated the principle of being at equal distance to every faith, including those of no faith, his constitutional amendments would not have been scrapped by the Constitutional Court, nor would his party have been found guilty of anti-constitutional activity.

There is only one way for someone who speaks of religious freedoms and being at equal distance to every faith; Grant all faiths all the freedoms they want! Mr. Erdogan will not do so. There is only one faith in his innermost mind.