{"id":70705,"date":"2013-06-19T07:31:09","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T04:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=70705"},"modified":"2014-01-08T12:30:51","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T10:30:51","slug":"turkeys-alevis-outraged-by-executioner-name-for-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/06\/19\/turkeys-alevis-outraged-by-executioner-name-for-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey\u2019s Alevis Outraged by \u2018Executioner\u2019 Name for Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bloomberg<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
By Selcan Hacaoglu<\/span> – May 30, 2013 5:00 PM ET<\/span> <\/cite><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Turkey\u2019s Alevis, the country\u2019s biggest religious minority, expressed outrage at a decision to name a new bridge after an Ottoman sultan who massacred their ancestors.<\/p>\n

The government gave the name Yavuz Sultan Selim to the planned third bridge over the Bosporus in Istanbul during a May 29 ceremony. The emperor, also known as Selim the Grim, crushed the Alevis during a 16th-century military campaign against the Persian Safavid Empire.<\/p>\n

Selim I was \u201cthe executioner of Alevis,\u201d Huseyin Aygun, an Alevi lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party, said in a phone interview. Ali Balkiz, former head of an Alevi umbrella group, said his name \u201cbrings out feelings of hatred rather than sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alevis, members of an unorthodox offshoot of Shiite Islam, may make up one-fifth of Turkey\u2019s population. They have complained of discrimination under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose party has been in power since 2002 and has roots in Sunni Islamist movements.<\/p>\n

Erdogan has promoted Turkey\u2019s Ottoman past, when the sultans were also religious leaders for the world\u2019s Sunni Muslims, over the secular system created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 20th century. Selim, the first sultan to take the title of Caliph of Islam, also added lands as far afield as Egypt to the empire.<\/p>\n

As conflict in the Middle East divides the region along sectarian lines, Turkey has been increasingly pulled onto the Sunni side. It\u2019s backing Sunni-led rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect is also derived from Shiism. Turkey has also quarreled with Shiite-led governments in Iraq and Iran.<\/p>\n

\u2018Great Sultan\u2019<\/h2>\n

The government has denied discrimination against Alevis. The bridge\u2019s name was chosen \u201cto pay tribute to a great sultan who expanded the boundaries of our empire and who brought sacred relics\u201d of the Prophet Mohammad to Istanbul, President Abdullah Gul said at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

It was held on the anniversary of the 1453 capture of Istanbul by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, after whom the second Bosporus bridge was named in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The $3 billion suspension bridge will be the world\u2019s widest. Erdogan asked the builders, who include Hyundai Development Co (012630). and Astaldi SpA (AST), to finish it within two years, months earlier than scheduled.<\/p>\n

There are no official figures for the size of Turkey\u2019s Alevi minority. Hasan Cem Yilmaz, general secretary of an Alevi group in Ankara, the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association, puts the figure at between 10 and 15 million, out of 76 million.<\/p>\n

Ottoman Past<\/h2>\n

Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Istanbul\u2019s Bilgi University, said he didn\u2019t think the name was intended as a \u201cmessage to Alevis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see it as a preference by the government to romanticize and accept the Ottoman past as a whole,\u201d he said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

Balkiz said Erdogan\u2019s government has ignored Alevi demands for religious equality and recognition of their houses of worship, which are denied state funding unlike more than 84,000 Sunni mosques.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted an end to compulsory religious culture and ethics classes with a Sunni bias\u201d in schools, he said. Instead, \u201cthey introduced new elective lessons, including the Koran and the life of the prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violent History<\/h2>\n

Turkey\u2019s Presidency of Religious Affairs finances Sunni mosques. Its budget increased 18 percent this year, triple the rate of inflation, to 4.6 billion liras ($2.5 billion), according to the Finance Ministry.<\/p>\n

The European Union has flagged discrimination against Alevis as a problem for Turkey\u2019s membership bid. \u201cAlevis continue to experience difficulties in establishing new places of worship,\u201d EU enlargement chief Stefan Fule said May 13.<\/p>\n

Alevis, who do away with many customary Islamic practices, including the separation of men and women in prayer and taboos on alcohol, are considered heretics by many Sunni and Shia traditionalists.<\/p>\n

There is a history of violence against Alevis in Turkey.<\/p>\n

An arson attack on a hotel in the central city of Sivas in 1993 left 37 people dead, including several Alevi writers and singers. They had gathered to commemorate Pir Sultan Abdal, a 16th-century poet hanged for preaching rebellion. Nationalists and religious extremists went on a weeklong rampage in the southern province of Kahramanmaras in 1978 that left more than 100 Alevis dead.<\/p>\n

Before those killings, Alevi houses were marked with red paint. Yilmaz said by telephone that he was \u201cworried for the safety of Alevis\u201d because he\u2019d heard reports that the practice has recurred recently in cities including Istanbul and Bursa.<\/p>\n

To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net<\/p>\n

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg By Selcan Hacaoglu – May 30, 2013 5:00 PM ET Turkey\u2019s Alevis, the country\u2019s biggest religious minority, expressed outrage at a decision to name a new bridge after an Ottoman sultan who massacred their ancestors. The government gave the name Yavuz Sultan Selim to the planned third bridge over the Bosporus in Istanbul during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":43479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}