Tag: Alawites

  • Turkey’s Alawite Community Worried About Syria Conflict

    Turkey’s Alawite Community Worried About Syria Conflict

    Supporters of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad hold up national flags and a Russian flag as they attend a rally at Umayyad square in Damascus, Syria, March 15, 2012.

    reuters syria assad supporters 480 15march2012

    While the Turkish government is among those at the forefront of condemning Syria’s brutal crackdown on dissent, the country’s large Alawite minority, known as Alevis in Turkey, has a different perspective.

    At a meeting of Alevis in central Istanbul, Ali Kenanoglu, speaks about the situation in Syria and criticizes the Turkish prime minister’s strong support for the Syrian opposition.

    Kenanoglu is the head of the Hubyar Sultan Alevi cultural society in Istanbul. He says the prime minister’s support may play well among the mainly Sunni supporters of the ruling AK party, but it is creating growing unease among Alevis in Turkey.

    He says the attitude of the prime minister and government is really worrying many Alevis. He says the Syrian opposition is not about democracy. Kenanoglu says some of the groups fighting the Syrian government invoke fears among Alevis of persecution they suffered in the past from Sunni leaders.

    Last month, Turkish Alevis rallied close to the Syrian border in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That was a step too far for most Alevis in Turkey, says Kamil Aykanat, head of the Haci Bektas Culture Foundation, another Alevi group based in Istanbul.

    But Aykanat says while there are some religious and cultural differences between Syrian Alawites and their Turkish cousins, they share a common identity.

    He says his people are Anatolian Alevis and those in Syria are Arab Alevis. But he says wherever you go in the world, if you use the word Alevi or Alawite, you are connected by a brotherhood.

    There are no official figures for the Alevi population in Turkey, as their religious beliefs are not recognized by the state. But it is believed that they make up as much as a quarter of the Turkish population.

    Many Turkish Alevis are deeply suspicious of the Sunni roots of the ruling AK party, according to political commentator Soli Ozel of the Turkish Newspaper Haberturk. He says those suspicions are getting worse with the government increasingly perceived by Alevis to be taking a pro-Sunni stance towards Syria.

    “In a region where the lines and swords are drawn along sectarian lines, I really don’t know how Turkey can actually keep itself above the fray. And what kind of impact this might have on Turkey’s own Sunni Alevi divide remains to be seen. But that creates some tension in my view,” Ozel said.

    Alevis do not pray in mosques, and men and women worship together. They are viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility, by many in Turkey’s Sunni majority.

    Turkish Alevis have been the victims of persecution and widespread killings. The most recent, in 1993, took place when dozens of Alevis attending a cultural festival died when their hotel was set on fire by a pro-Islamic mob.

    Culture foundation head Aykanat says there is growing concern that if the current crisis in Syria descends into a Sunni-Alawite conflict, it may spill over into Turkey.

    But he says Alevis in Turkey will be organized and have solidarity if their situation deteriorates. He says they are aware of what happened to their ancestors in the past.

    At an Istanbul Alevi place of worship, there is unease about the events in Syria. One man says, however, he is confident Sunnis and Alevis share a common Turkish identity that transcends their differences.

    He says if it becomes a Sunni-Alawite confrontation in Syria, then he would be very worried, as it could come to Turkey. But he says Turkish people have changed, and there is more common sense between Sunnis and Alevis, so he hopes it will not come to that.

    But with the Turkish media broadcasting horrific pictures out of Syria, and with many channels describing the violence in sectarian terms, there are fears that tensions from the Syrian crisis could rise in Turkey.

    via Turkey’s Alawite Community Worried About Syria Conflict | News | English, VOA

  • Video: Alawite Muslims in Turkey show support for Assad

    Video: Alawite Muslims in Turkey show support for Assad

    w460

    Turkey is continuing to put pressure on Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to resign, but not all Turks share this attitude. In Antakya, close to the Syrian border, a small community of Alawite Muslims are still backing Assad.

  • Should Syrian Christians be afraid?

    Should Syrian Christians be afraid?

    A protester burns a picture of President Bashar al-Assad in Istanbul. According to one Syrian activist, fear is slowly dying as similar scenes are being witnessed inside Syria. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)
    A protester burns a picture of President Bashar al-Assad in Istanbul. According to one Syrian activist, fear is slowly dying as similar scenes are being witnessed inside Syria. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)

     

    “Christians to Beirut and the Alawites to the coffin.”

    This chant, which some Syrians say they’ve heard during demonstrations in their country, alludes to what many Syrian minorities fear might happen should the 40-year rule of the Baath regime come to an end.

    Many experts agree that President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite ruling a majority-Sunni country, has managed to keep his grip on power in part thanks to mutual backing between his regime and the country’s other minorities, a number of which is made up of educated, middle-class Christians. As a result, it comes as no surprise that a number of them voice worry about the regime’s possible downfall.

    At the same time, “The regime has an active interest in frightening the Christians. And if you want to frighten someone, it’s always good if you have some evidence,” argues Professor Volker Perthes, director of SWP, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, referring to the abovementioned chants.

    The regime, some experts say, is making it seem that fanatical Muslims are prepared to take over should the president and his cronies be pushed out.

    But should Syria’s Christian community, which is around 10 percent of the population, actually be afraid?

    A number of upper-middle-class Christians are still undecided, Ahed Al Hendi, a Syrian political refugee currently working for CyberDissidents.org in Washington, DC, told NOW Lebanon.

    Many who have their own businesses fear the instability, said Al Hendi, who describes himself as a non-practicing Christian. They are pro-Assad and scared of the ascent to power of the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists should Assad fall. “But I think it’s paranoia – I don’t think it is possible to have an Islamic dominance. For many reasons,” he said, starting with the fact that the population in Syria is much more diverse than in the rest of the region.

     

    Compared to Egypt’s estimated 94-6 Muslim-to-Christian ratio, “Syria has Kurds, Alawites, Christians, and an overall more secular vibe, so it’s different,” he said.

    “Christians seem to avoid strife and tend to their own business,” said one Lebanese woman, who is married to a Syrian Christian and just returned from Damascus. “But if you scratch a bit beneath the surface, you know that in their hearts, they feel the regime is wrong, [that it is] a dictatorship,” she said. The woman, who asked that her name not be printed to protect her in-laws in Syria, also said that the number of Christians engaged in the demonstrations is beginning to climb.

    According to Professor Perthes, Christians and Alawites have been taking part in the demonstrations all along.

     

    “The opposition has always made it very clear that confessional belonging doesn’t count for them,” he said during a phone interview with NOW Lebanon, noting longtime Christian and Alawite opposition activists Michel Kilo and Aref Dalila, respectively.

     

    Unlike traditional sectarian or class battles, “The uprising in Syria… is rather a question of marginalization in a country where wealth is very much concentrated in Damascus,” stressed Perthes, noting that outlying areas, such as Homs and Hama, were always a “revolutionary hotspot.”

    “It’s true, people are seeing it as a Muslim thing, because people are coming out of the mosque, but it’s known about Syria that there is no place to gather people without looking suspicious except in the mosques, or in football matches,” noted Al Hendi.

    A video titled “Christians are with the Syrian revolution” that was uploaded onto YouTube on May 16 features Mar Agnathious Joseph the Third, Patriarch of Antioch for Syrian Catholics, stressing that Christians in Syria seek civil rights for everyone and have long been united with all the Syrian people to make the country prosper.

    “One thing I would say is that the Christian community in Syria are very much citizens of Syria. They are very well grounded, a substantial minority, that has played a role in history,” said Harry Hagopian, an international lawyer in London and Middle East advisor of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in England and Wales. But he stressed that there are tensions across all communities in Syria today, and that people should be wary of speculating too much on the situation from outside.

    “My understanding is that many of those Christian communities would be happy and open to the sense of reform being requested for the past weeks,” he said, though he added it is hard to tell what the future holds, referring to the difficult plight of the Christians in Iraq and recent sectarian clashes in Egypt.

    “But let me say another thing before we jump to conclusions: I have also been informed by many people that what is happening in Egypt,” Hagopian said in a reference to recent Muslim-Christian violence there, “has a lot to do with a sense of incitement that is being promoted, propagated and fed in by people from the former regime.”

    Al Hendi stresses that the fear of sectarian strife in Syria is not realistic and stems from paranoia.

    What’s more, things seem to be changing. “People are tearing photos of Assad out on the street,” he said. “We would have never even imagined this a few weeks ago. I think the fear is slowly starting to go.”

    via Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Should Syrian Christians be afraid?.