Head of the Pir Sultan Abdal Association Fevzi Gümüş says, “We are getting together to send a warning to the ruling power and show the society the open and covered discrimination the Alevite community suffers from at every level.”

Many Alevite organizations and the unions, political parties, rights and professional organization that support them will meet under the leadership of the Alevite Bektashi Federation for “equal citizenship at Ankara’s Sıhhıye Square on November 9.

Gümüş thinks the society is not fully aware of the problems the Alevis are experiencing. Moreover, he emphasizes that these problems cannot be separated from the demands for equality and freedom.

Gümüş calls everyone who has suffered from discrimination to the meeting. “Today the Alevis are expressing this demand. These demands need support, so that the Alevis can, in turn, support the demands of the other social groups such as the women, the workers, the Kurds. We can do this together.”

Close to 150 intellectuals had already announced that they were supporting Alevis’ demands.

“We have never suffered so much discrimination as we have under the AKP rule”

According to Gümüş, the Alevis had never suffered so much discrimination as they had under the AKP rule and he describes the purpose of the meeting as showing the insincerity of the AKP rule towards the problems of the Alevite community.

Reminding that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had already ruled that Turkey’s attitude with the mandatory religion courses was a clear violation of the human rights, Gümüş said that Ministry of Education Hüseyin Çelik was simply trying to save the mandatory religion courses by pretending to have added information about the Alevite belief to the school books. However, he continues, what they put in the books is an Sunni-ified form of the Alevite belief.

“There is every kind of discrimination at the level of public life. Not only the Alevis, but the leftists and democrats are under pressure as well.” Gümüş also reminded the discrimination and the violence the Alevi students had to experience because of being Alevis. The Human Rights Commission of the Parliament had uncovered the violence a teacher was subjecting to the Alevi students.

Mandatory religion course, Director of Religious Affairs, Cem Houses, Madımak

Alevis demand (1) equal citizenship against discrimination, (2) an end to the mandatory religion courses, (3) the abolishment of the Director of Religious Courses, (4) official status to Cem Houses, the Alevite house of worship, (5) turning the Madımak Hotel in Sivas to a museum, where a group of Alevi and leftist artists and intellectuals were burned to death by a Sunni mob.

Alevis also demand removal of the expressions that are derogative to the Alevi belief in the school books, recognition of the Alevi organizations as representatives of their community, the administration of the religious sites important to the Alevite belief. (TK/TB)