A Turkish court rejected a request by a Alawite seeking the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate to recognise them as religious figures.
Representatives of Turkey’s Alawite community are seeking to be given official recognition by the state, and to receive support similar to that extended to the majority Sunni sect.
The zmir Limontepe Cemevi (place of worship for Alawites) applied to the State of Council on Thursday to have the separate religious identity of their sect recognised. Representatives of the Cemevi said that if they were not successful in their application through the Turkish courts, they would take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The main demand in the court case is to have official recognition of the Alawites as a faith, have the state Religious Affairs Directorate appoint paid personnel cemevis as well as to mosques, and a restructuring of the Religious Affairs Directorate.
Currently, the Directorate only recognises the majority Summi sect, providing personnel for their mosques and building places of worship. The Alawites, who do not worship in mosques but in prayer houses or cemevis, do not receive any official support or recognition.
“There are more than 20 million people of the Alawites belief in Turkey,” said a lawyer representing the group. “These people do not exist de facto and under the law.”