Making up about 15-20 percent of Turkey’s 76 million people, Alevis
draw from Shi’a, Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions. (File photo: AP)
Reuters
The European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey on Tuesday for
discriminating against members of the Alevi religious minority by
failing to grant their places of worship the same status and advantages
as those of other faiths.
Making up about
15-20 percent of Turkey’s 76 million people, Alevis draw from Shi’a,
Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions, practicing distinct rituals which
can put them at odds with their Sunni Muslim counterparts, many of whom
accuse them of heresy.
The head of an
Alevi foundation argued that Turkey had discriminated against the
minority by refusing to recognize cemevis, or assembly houses, as
religious sites, which are exempted from paying electricity bills. The
foundation had piled up 289,182 euros ($358,586) of unpaid bills since
2006, when it first applied for the exemption.
A
panel of seven judges at the Strasbourg-based court ruled against
Turkish courts which had said that cemevis were not religious sites,
based on an opinion from the Turkish religious authority stating that
the Alevi faith was not a religion.
“The
court rules that the plaintiff foundation was subjected to differing
treatment, without objective or reasonable cause, and the method of
exemption from payment of electricity bills for religious sites in
Turkish law was enacting discrimination on the basis of religion,” a
summary of the ruling read.
The court has
jurisdiction to hear allegations of violations of the European
Convention on Human Rights, which Turkey ratified in 1954. It did not
specify any penalty, but gave the Turkish state and the Alevi plaintiffs
six months to propose an estimate of damages for discrimination.
Protests
erupted in September in Ankara when Alevis reacted against plans to
build a Sunni mosque next to a cemevi, which many said was an attempt to
assimilate their community into the Sunni majority.
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