The "Enemy of the Alevis" Claim

Where did the label come from?

The description "enemy of the Alevis" spread on social media in July 2016, immediately after the coup attempt of 15 July. There was no incident, no court case and no recording of a speech; the description was attached directly to the person and to the movement. The attack claim that went into circulation in those same days was the most visible post carrying this description, but the label was also repeated independently of that post.

Twenty-two years in the same city

The most concrete answer to this claim is a fact that requires no interpretation anyone could dispute: the Furkan Foundation is based in Adana, and Adana is one of the provinces where the Alevi population is concentrated.

Since 1994 the foundation has carried out educational and service work in many provinces and districts, Adana among them. Talks are held, conferences are organised, publications come out. So this is not an abstract presence but a visible activity lasting twenty-two years, on the same streets, in the same neighbourhoods, among the same shopkeepers.

At the end of that period there is not a single recorded violent incident between the two groups. The direction makes no difference either: no incident occurred from the Alevis towards the foundation, nor from the foundation towards the Alevis.

Enmity leaves a trace

If a person or a structure really is hostile to a group, a trace of it remains behind. The places to look are known:

• a speech or a piece of writing marking someone out as a target,
• a case opened on grounds of insult or hate speech,
• a fight that took place, a tension, a complaint,
• a reproach, a statement, a reaction coming from the other side.

For twenty-two years of activity, the fact that this list remains entirely empty is not something that coincidence can explain. What is more, the opposite of the picture is true: participants of Alevi origin have joined the movement, and there have been people who supported the movement without joining it. Where there is enmity, this does not happen either.

Labels that exclude one another

The second piece of evidence comes not from the claim itself, but from the claim's neighbours. Over the years the following descriptions have been used for the same person and the same movement:

Pro-Iranian, ISIS supporter, member of the parallel structure, HDP supporter, outside the Ahl al-Sunnah, enemy of the Sufi orders, pro-Russian.

There are descriptions on this list that cannot stand side by side. Being on Iran's line and being on ISIS's line are not possible at the same time; these two sides fought against each other in Syria. In the same way, the descriptions "ISIS supporter" and "pro-Russian" cannot stand together either; in Syria, Russia took a position against ISIS. There are too many directions here for the whole list to be true.

Why is the label renewed?

The meaning of the list emerges here. An observation is shaped by the thing observed; when it does not hold, it is corrected, it does not multiply. What is happening here, however, is not correction but succession: when one label meets no response, it is dropped and a new one is tried in its place.

This shows that the labels derive not from observation but from the target. What does not change is the target; what changes is the justification. The description "enemy of the Alevis" is a new link in this chain, and it has appeared for the same reason as those before it.

What should the measure be?

How a structure regards a group is read not from the headlines thrown at it, but from the time it has spent side by side with that group. What is at hand here is a record of twenty-two years spent in the same city, without incident.

Refuting this record is not difficult: a single document, a single court case, a single date would be enough. Those who attach the label have to this day produced no such thing.