Carrying the Flame

On the top floor of a deconsecrated Evangelical church in Berlin's Kreuzberg area, Ismet Dertli puts the finishing touches on the curriculum for a new subject being offered in the city's public schools. It's a course that hasn't previously been taught in any government-sanctioned school, at least not for a few centuries: Turkish Alevism.

This mystic brand of Islam is practiced by 25% of the more than 2.5 million Turks in Germany and up to 30% of Turkey's 66 million people — though you won't find them in any census. That's because Turkey, mindful of its fractious past, forbids large minorities from formally identifying themselves as anything other than Turkish Muslim. "As a result," says Dertli, "most Europeans don't even know we exist."

The building is Berlin's Anatolian Alevi Culture Center, one of nearly 300 such facilities scattered across Europe. Delegates from 165 centers converged on Brussels this summer to form a pan-European Alevi Union, something unheard of back home. Turgut Öker, who heads the union, hopes the organization's existence will speed the process of reform and help bring Turkey into the European Union.

Non-Muslims enjoy religious freedom in Turkey, but the 98% of the population who are Muslims must study a Sunni-based Islamic curriculum designed by Turkey's Department of Religion. In Germany, however, public schools provide religious instruction in accordance with the country's "religious communities." That once meant Catholic or Protestant, but most German school districts have introduced Islamic studies as well. In Berlin, parents can choose from curricula offered by several recognized religious communities. Result: 10 schools with Alevi classes and 20 for Sunnis.

"The older generation get really choked up when they see these Alevi culture centers popping up all over the place, and the school thing is big news back in Turkey," says Iraz Karan, 27, a Berlin-born Alevi whose parents come from Turkey. "The traditions that became Turkish Alevism exist all over the Arab world and are very diverse." Alevis follow the Shi'ite path laid down by Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali, but with a twist. "Orthodox Shi'ites say the entire Koran is the word of God," says Metin Küçük, director of the Berlin center. "But we differentiate between Muhammad's inspired verse and the rules he came up with later on, when he was an administrator and warrior."

That means no mosques, no five daily prayers, no separate worship for men and women, and no facing Mecca. Instead, Alevis pray in a circle, facing each other. In place of Islamic law, they have a 40-step process for achieving the mystical sense of oneness preached by Muhammad in the Koran's early verses. To create a single curriculum for Germany, the Alevis recruited a panel of people drawn from various parts of Turkey and began putting their oral traditions on paper. "The core of Alevism is simple and humanistic," Küçük says. "That means we don't bog down in matters of dogma concerning this verse or that one. So we've found it easier to become somewhat unified in Europe, as well as to integrate into European society." That humanism is personified in Haji Bektash, a 13th century Alevi holy man who, according to Alevi lore, encouraged people to turn the other cheek and love their neighbors. Alevis generally embraced Kemal Ataturk's separation of church and state in the 1930s, but their outsider status drew many to leftist politics.

The Alevis in Germany started organizing politically in July 1993, after a mob in the Turkish city of Sivas torched a hotel where satirist Aziz Nesin, known for lampooning religious extremism, was entertaining at an Alevi function. Thirty-seven people died, and images of the "Sivas Martyrs" quickly appeared on the walls of Alevi culture centers across Europe. Says Karan: "Those of us who were born in Germany began to wonder about our identity, and young parents began to realize they wanted to pass something on to their kids."

The Sivas incident remains a sore point in Germany, where a man convicted of instigating the attack has been granted political asylum and the applications of two others are pending. Alevi leaders are using their newfound political muscle to fight for the perpetrators' extradition to Turkey. But many of the younger Alevis have raised the question: What would Haji Bektash say?