Doubts grow for Alevis in Turkey

"Remote and poor, Tunceli has all the ingredients of a typical rural town in eastern Turkey, except that Tunceli is anything but typical.
Women here do not wear kerchiefs. The central mosque remains empty even on Fridays. Local politics has a Cold War feel about it, dominated by a medley of communists and socialists -- political groups that are marginal elsewhere in Turkey.
The key to Tunceli's oddness lies in the identity of its people. Like perhaps 20 percent of Turks, they are not Sunni Muslims, but Alevi -- members of a sect distantly related to Shi'ites."

"Men, women and children attend the Thursday meeting at the "cemevi," an Alevi place of worship that is not considered a mosque.
There is music and stylized circular dancing. The ceremony ends with the religious leader, in tears, describing the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, at the hands of a Sunni caliph.
Onlookers sob, and a woman hands out handkerchiefs."

"Alevis are particularly irked that the state denies them the right to describe their cemevis as places of worship. The few cemevis there owe their existence to private donations. Sunni mosques and preachers, meanwhile, are funded by the state.
"Why should the taxes I pay be used to build buildings I'll never use," asked Tunceli shopkeeper Murat Polat.
Like the European Union's representative for Turkey, Hansjoerg Kretschmer, who argued in January that the Diyanet "has no place in a secular country," Mr. Polat wants to see the agency abolished.
Arif Kuyumcu, a frequent worshipper at Karacaahmet Sultan, an Istanbul cemevi, said, "Funding yourself guarantees independence. If Turkey stopped using public money to pay for mosques, I swear the number [of mosques] would drop."
Doubts grow for Alevis in Turkey�-�World�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper