A Living Tradition of the Middle East

On 2 July 1993, a mob surrounded the Madımak Hotel in Sivas, a city in central Anatolia. Inside the hotel, artists, poets, musicians, and intellectuals had gathered for a cultural festival celebrating the Alevi poet Pir Sultan Abdal — a sixteenth-century bard who had been executed for rebellion and whose songs of resistance, love, and heterodox devotion still formed the living core of Alevi musical tradition. The mob set fire to the building. Thirty-three people inside burned to death. Two hotel employees also died. The fire burned for hours. The crowd outside watched, chanted, and prevented fire trucks from approaching.

The dead included Hasret Gültekin, a young saz player of extraordinary talent. Nesimi Çimen, a folk singer whose voice carried the Alevi devotional repertoire. Muhlis Akarsu, one of the great aşıks — the wandering bard-saints of the Anatolian tradition. Metin Altıok, a poet. And dozens of others — intellectuals, musicians, ordinary festival-goers — who had committed the offence of being Alevis in a city where the Sunni majority had decided, that afternoon, that Alevis did not have the right to gather and celebrate their tradition in public.

The Sivas massacre is the event that defines modern Alevi political consciousness the way Karbala defines Shia consciousness — except that Karbala happened in 680 and Sivas happened in 1993, and the perpetrators were not ancient enemies but neighbours, and the state security forces that might have intervened did not. The Madımak Hotel still stands. For years, the Alevi community petitioned to have it converted into a museum. In 2011, the Turkish government converted it into a cultural centre instead. The compromise satisfied nobody. The building still stands in the middle of Sivas, and the Alevis still remember who burned inside it.

I. What Aleviism Is — And What It Is Not

Aleviism (Turkish: Alevilik; the adherents are Alevis, from Arabic Alawī, "of Ali") is the religious tradition of approximately fifteen to twenty million people in Turkey and the Turkish diaspora — roughly fifteen to twenty-five percent of Turkey's population, though reliable figures are impossible to obtain because the Turkish state does not collect data on religious affiliation within Islam and officially classifies all Muslim citizens as Sunni.

The question of what Aleviism is — whether it is a sect of Islam, a distinct religion, a form of Sufism, a syncretic Anatolian folk tradition, or something else entirely — is one of the most contested questions in the study of religion in the Middle East. The Alevis themselves are divided on the answer.

What can be said with confidence is what Aleviism is not:

Aleviism is not Sunni Islam. Alevis do not pray five times a day. They do not attend mosques. They do not fast during Ramadan (they observe their own fast during Muharram, mourning the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbala). They do not generally undertake the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. They do not observe the standard Islamic requirement of gender segregation in worship. The five pillars of Sunni Islam are, as a practical matter, not the pillars of Alevi religious life.

Aleviism is not Twelver Shia Islam, though it shares the Shia reverence for Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Twelve Imams. Alevis do not follow the Shia jurisprudential tradition (fiqh). They do not practise taqiyya (dissimulation) in the systematic Shia sense, though centuries of persecution have taught them discretion. Their theology, their ritual, their social organisation, and their understanding of the Quran diverge sharply from Twelver Shia orthodoxy.

Aleviism is not Sufism, though it incorporates Sufi concepts (the tariqa, the murshid-talibi relationship, the mystical love of God) and venerates Sufi saints, above all Haji Bektash Veli. Sufism in the Sunni world operates as a mystical dimension within Islam. Aleviism operates as an alternative to the normative Islamic framework — using Islamic vocabulary, honouring Islamic figures, but constructing a religious life that looks nothing like what the word "Islam" typically denotes.

What Aleviism is, in practice, is a syncretic Anatolian tradition that weaves together three strands: (1) Shia devotion to Ali and the ahl al-bayt (the Prophet's family), understood in a mystical rather than political register; (2) Central Asian Turkic shamanic and animist traditions that survived the conversion to Islam and were absorbed into the new faith's heterodox margins; and (3) the teachings of the Sufi orders — particularly the Bektashi order — that provided intellectual and organisational structure to Anatolian heterodox piety.

II. Ali and the Twelve Imams

At the theological centre of Aleviism stands Ali ibn Abi Talib — the Prophet Muhammad's cousin, son-in-law, and (in the Shia understanding) rightful successor. But the Alevi Ali is not quite the same figure as the Shia Ali. In Alevi theology, Ali is not merely the first Imam — the political leader who should have succeeded Muhammad. Ali is a cosmic figure, a divine emanation, a manifestation of God's light that existed before creation.

The Alevi formulation is: Allah-Muhammad-Ali — a trinity (though Alevis would not use that Christian term) in which the three are aspects of a single divine reality. God reveals himself through Muhammad, and Muhammad's inner reality is Ali. The formula Ya Allah, ya Muhammad, ya Ali — spoken at the opening of every cem ceremony — is not a sequence of three separate invocations but a single address to the divine in three aspects.

The Twelve Imams — from Ali through Husayn, Zayn al-Abidin, Muhammad al-Baqir, Ja'far al-Sadiq, and onward to Muhammad al-Mahdi — are venerated as the chain of spiritual authority (velayat) through which divine knowledge passes from generation to generation. The mourning of Husayn's martyrdom at Karbala (680 CE) is the most emotionally intense period of the Alevi religious year: the twelve-day Muharram fast, observed with genuine grief and communal lamentation, is the closest Alevi equivalent to the Shia Ashura observances, though the forms differ.

But where Twelver Shiism locates authority in jurisprudence and clerical hierarchy, Aleviism locates it in mystical experience and communal consensus. The Alevi approach to the Quran is esoteric (batini): the literal text conceals a deeper meaning that can only be accessed through spiritual insight. The Quran is honoured but not read literally, not memorised for recitation, and not treated as a legal code. The Alevi relationship with scripture is closer to the Sufi relationship than to the Sunni or Shia one — the text is a doorway, not a destination.

III. Haji Bektash Veli and the Bektashi Connection

The figure who gave Aleviism its intellectual and organisational shape was Haji Bektash Veli (حاجی بکتاش ولی, c. 1209–1271), a Sufi saint of Central Asian (possibly Khorasani) origin who settled in Anatolia and founded the community from which the Bektashi Order would develop.

Haji Bektash is one of the most revered figures in the Alevi tradition — his sayings are quoted, his tomb at Hacıbektaş in Nevşehir province is the most important Alevi pilgrimage site in Turkey, and his festival (held annually in August) draws tens of thousands. His famous maxims — "The greatest book to read is the human being"; "Whatever you search for, search within yourself"; "Educate your women, for a nation that does not educate its women cannot progress" — reflect the Alevi tradition's characteristic emphases: humanism, interiority, and gender equality.

The relationship between Aleviism and the Bektashi Order is complex. The Bektashi Order — formally established after Haji Bektash's death by Balım Sultan (d. 1516) — became the institutional home of heterodox Sufism in the Ottoman Empire. It was the spiritual order of the Janissary corps. It was the framework within which Central Asian shamanistic practices, Shia devotion, Christian (particularly Eastern Orthodox) influences, and antinomian Sufi mysticism were synthesised into a coherent tradition.

Aleviism and Bektashism overlap but are not identical. Rural Anatolian Aleviism is older and more folk-rooted: it preserves Central Asian elements (sacred animals, nature veneration, fire ceremonies) more openly, and its religious leadership structure (the dede system, see below) is distinct from the Bektashi hierarchical order. Urban Bektashism is more literate, more cosmopolitan, more influenced by classical Sufi philosophy. In practice, the two traditions have interpenetrated for centuries, and many Alevis also identify as Bektashi.

IV. The Cem — Assembly for Worship

The central religious ceremony of Aleviism is the cem (جم, pronounced "jem" — from Arabic jam', "gathering" or "assembly"). The cem is not held in a mosque. It is held in a cemevi (جم اوی — "house of assembly"), a purpose-built or designated communal space. The cem is the Alevi equivalent of the Friday mosque service — except that it is held on Thursday evenings, involves music and sacred dance, includes women and men worshipping together as equals, and has a structure that looks nothing like any form of Islamic communal prayer.

A full cem ceremony — the Abdal Musa Cemi or Görgü Cemi (the "cem of observation," held annually to assess the community's moral state) — involves twelve services (on iki hizmet), each performed by a designated member of the community:

The dede (grandfather/spiritual leader) presides. The rehber (guide) escorts initiates. The gözcü (watchman) maintains order. The çerağcı (lamplighter) tends the sacred candles. The zakir (reciter/musician) plays the saz and sings the devotional songs. The süpürgeci (sweeper) ritually cleanses the space. The meydancı (master of the floor) arranges the ceremonial space. The niyazcı (food server) distributes the sacred meal. The sakacı (water-bearer) serves water. The kapıcı (doorkeeper) guards the entrance. The peyikçi (messenger) communicates between the dede and the community. The semahçı (dancers) perform the sacred dance.

The semah (سماع — from the same Arabic root as the Sufi sema, "listening") is the most visually striking element of the cem: a sacred dance performed by men and women together, turning, arms extended, in movements that represent the mystical union of the human soul with the divine. The semah is not entertainment. It is worship — the body in prayer, the turning a physical expression of the soul's rotation around the divine centre. The dancers represent the cranes that, according to legend, circled above the plain of Karbala after Husayn's martyrdom.

The saz (also called bağlama) — the long-necked stringed instrument of the Anatolian folk tradition — is the sacred instrument of Aleviism, occupying a position analogous to the organ in Christian liturgy. It is called telli Kuran — "the Quran with strings" — because the Alevi tradition holds that divine truth is transmitted as much through music as through scripture.

The cem concludes with the communal sharing of food (lokma) — a sacred meal, not a social event, in which every member of the community eats together. The theological implication is the same as in the Eucharist or the Sikh langar: the shared meal is an act of communion, of solidarity, of the dissolution of social distinction in the presence of the sacred.

V. The Dede — The Hereditary Spiritual Leader

Alevi religious leadership is vested in the dede (دده — "grandfather"), a figure whose authority derives not from learning or appointment but from descent. The dede belongs to one of the holy lineages — families tracing their ancestry to Ali, to the Twelve Imams, to Haji Bektash Veli, or to other revered saints of the tradition. The role is hereditary. You do not become a dede. You are born one.

The dede's function is pastoral and judicial. He presides over the cem ceremony. He mediates disputes within the community. He conducts the musahiplik ceremony (a ritual brotherhood between two married couples, creating a bond of mutual obligation stronger than blood kinship). He oversees the annual görgü — a communal reckoning in which community members confess wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, and reconcile disputes. No one who has an unresolved conflict with a community member may participate in the cem. The community must be at peace before it can worship.

The dede-talibi (dede-disciple) relationship is the structural unit of Alevi religious organisation. Each dede lineage (ocak — "hearth") serves a particular set of communities (talip families). The relationship is hereditary on both sides: the dede family serves the same talip families generation after generation, and the talip families owe loyalty and material support to their specific dede lineage. This creates a network of obligations that functions as a decentralised religious infrastructure — no hierarchy, no central authority, but a web of personal relationships connecting every Alevi community to a spiritual leader.

VI. The Aşık — The Sacred Bard

The aşık (عاشق — "lover," in the Sufi sense of the one who is intoxicated with divine love) is the Alevi tradition's poet-musician: the wandering bard who carries the sacred songs, composes new ones, and serves as the tradition's living library. The aşık tradition connects Aleviism to the older Central Asian tradition of the ozan — the Turkic bard-shaman — and to the broader Sufi qawwali tradition, though the musical language is distinctly Anatolian.

The greatest Alevi aşıks are venerated as saints. Pir Sultan Abdal (16th century) — the rebel poet whose festival occasioned the Sivas massacre — composed songs of such piercing devotional and political intensity that they remain the anthems of Alevi identity:

They forced me to this gallows for my love. I did not renounce my faith. I did not bend. Pir Sultan Abdal says: the crane does not abandon its lake. I will not abandon my Ali.

Yunus Emre (c. 1238–1320), though claimed by the Sunni Turkish state as a national poet, is deeply embedded in the Alevi tradition, and his mystical humanism — "We love the created for the Creator's sake" — is more at home in Alevi theology than in Sunni orthodoxy. Kaygusuz Abdal (15th century) — the aristocrat who became a wandering dervish — wrote satirical, paradoxical verse that mocked conventional piety and insisted that God was to be found in wine, in laughter, in the irreverent truth.

The aşık tradition is not dead. Contemporary Alevi musicians — Ali Ekber Çiçek, Arif Sağ, Erdal Erzincan, Sabahat Akkiraz — perform and compose within the tradition, adapting the saz-based devotional repertoire to modern recording and concert contexts while maintaining the spiritual core.

VII. The Twelve Services and the Moral Universe

Alevi ethics centre on three principles attributed to Haji Bektash Veli:

Eline, diline, beline sahip ol — "Be master of your hands, your tongue, and your loins."

This formula — control what you do, what you say, and what you desire — is the Alevi equivalent of a creed. It is simple enough for a child to memorise and deep enough to organise an entire moral universe. "Master of your hands" means do not steal, do not strike, do not harm. "Master of your tongue" means do not lie, do not slander, do not gossip. "Master of your loins" means do not commit adultery, do not exploit, do not let desire govern will.

Alevi morality is communal rather than legalistic. The annual görgü ceremony — in which the community collectively examines itself, resolves conflicts, and reconciles the estranged — is the primary mechanism of moral enforcement. The dede does not issue rulings from above. The community, assembled together, holds itself accountable. A person who has wronged another must acknowledge the wrong in the presence of the community. A person who has been wronged must forgive in the presence of the community. Only after reconciliation has been achieved — only after every quarrel has been surfaced and resolved — can the cem proceed.

This means that the cem is not merely a worship service. It is also a court, a confessional, and a reconciliation tribunal. The Alevi community's spiritual health depends on its social health. You cannot worship God while you are at war with your neighbour. The cem makes this principle physically real: if you have an unresolved dispute, you cannot enter the ceremonial space.

VIII. Aleviism and the Turkish State

The history of Aleviism in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic is a history of intermittent persecution, systematic marginalisation, and a survival strategy that oscillates between invisibility and assertion.

In the Ottoman period, Alevis were associated with the Safavid dynasty of Iran — the Shia rulers who were the Ottomans' most dangerous rivals. The great Ottoman-Safavid wars of the sixteenth century had a sectarian dimension: the Alevis of eastern Anatolia were suspected (often correctly) of sympathy with the Safavid cause. The Ottoman state responded with massacres. Sultan Selim I's campaigns against the Kızılbaş ("Red Heads" — the Alevi-aligned Turkmen tribes) in 1514 and the following decades killed tens of thousands. The Alevi communities of central and eastern Anatolia retreated into isolation — mountain villages, closed communities, a tradition transmitted orally and secretly, invisible to outsiders.

The Turkish Republic (founded 1923) initially offered hope. Atatürk's secularism promised to remove religion from public life, which would, in theory, level the playing field. But the Republic's secularism was not neutral. The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) — the state body that manages religious institutions, pays imams, and controls the content of Friday sermons — is exclusively Sunni. Alevi cemevis are not recognised as places of worship. Alevi dedes are not paid by the state. Alevi children in state schools are required to take Sunni religious education courses. The Turkish state's official position, maintained consistently across secular and Islamist governments alike, is that Aleviism is not a separate religion or even a separate sect — it is a "folk" or "cultural" expression of Islam that requires no institutional recognition beyond what the Diyanet already provides.

The Alevis disagree. The demand for state recognition of cemevis as houses of worship, for the inclusion of Alevi perspectives in religious education, and for the institutional acknowledgment that Aleviism is a distinct tradition with its own clergy, its own liturgy, and its own theology — these demands form the core of the modern Alevi political movement.

The Sivas massacre of 1993 catalysed this movement. The subsequent Gazi neighbourhood uprising in Istanbul (1995), in which Alevi residents clashed with police after a series of attacks on Alevi-owned businesses, demonstrated the depth of Alevi anger. The Alevi diaspora in Germany — estimated at 500,000 to 800,000 people, the largest Alevi community outside Turkey — has been particularly active in advocating for recognition, building cemevis, organising cultural programming, and lobbying European institutions.

IX. Aleviism Today

The contemporary Alevi world is characterised by a paradox: the tradition is more visible than at any point in its history, and more threatened.

Visibility has come through cultural revival. Alevi music has entered the mainstream of Turkish popular culture. Alevi intellectuals have published extensively. Alevi associations in Turkey and Europe organise festivals, educational programmes, and interfaith dialogues. The annual Hacıbektaş festival — honouring Haji Bektash Veli — draws tens of thousands and has become a significant cultural event.

The threat comes from two directions. Assimilation — the gradual absorption of Alevi identity into either secular Turkish nationalism or mainstream Sunni Islam — erodes the tradition from within. Urbanisation has broken the village-based structures that sustained the dede-talibi relationship. Young Alevis in Istanbul, Ankara, and European cities may identify culturally as Alevi without practising the cem or maintaining a relationship with a dede lineage. Islamism — the rising political power of Sunni conservative movements in Turkey — threatens the tradition from without. The governing AKP's relationship with the Alevi community has been characterised by symbolic gestures (the Alevi Opening of 2009) that produced no structural change, alongside policies that further embedded the Diyanet's Sunni monopoly in state religious life.

The theological question — is Aleviism Islam? — remains genuinely unresolved, and the answer one gives depends on what one means by "Islam." If Islam means submission to the one God, reverence for Muhammad and Ali, mourning for Husayn — then Aleviism is Islam. If Islam means the five pillars, the Sharia, the mosque, the Quran as literal legal authority — then Aleviism is something else. Many Alevis prefer to say: Aleviism is Aleviism. It came from the same world as Islam, it uses the same vocabulary, it honours the same figures, but it is its own path.

What is not in question is the tradition's depth. Fifteen to twenty million people. A liturgy of extraordinary beauty — the saz, the semah, the shared meal, the turning. A moral system of remarkable clarity — hands, tongue, loins. A community whose survival through five centuries of persecution, massacre, and state hostility demonstrates exactly the resilience that the tradition's own theology predicts: the crane does not abandon its lake.

Colophon

This ethnographic profile of Aleviism was composed for the Living Traditions section of the Good Work Library. It draws on the general body of Alevi and Bektashi scholarship, including the work of David Shankland (The Alevis in Turkey, 2003), Markus Dressler (Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam, 2013), and Aykan Erdemir and various contributors to the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Turkish and Arabic terms are given with their original-script forms where available.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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