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Article snippet: OSMANCIK, Turkey — In the hills of northern Anatolia, next to a shrine to a medieval Muslim mystic, there stands a modest building that illustrates the fears and frustrations of Turkey’s Alevi minority. For years this small stone hall was a place of worship for local Alevis, heterodox Muslims who are estimated to form between a tenth and a fifth of the Turkish population. But one day in 2015, Ali Gormez, a local Alevi spiritual leader, arrived to find government officials had repurposed it as a mosque for the country’s Sunni Muslim majority. Given that there was already a Sunni mosque a few hundred yards away, Mr. Gormez suspected the reasons for the conversion were not entirely benign. “The purpose was not to find another Sunni place of worship but to prevent the Alevis from worshiping as they like,” Mr. Gormez said during a recent interview beside the shrine. “It’s a policy,” he added, “of denying the existence of Alevis.” The political trajectory of challenges he is perceived to pose to Turkey’s secular traditions. Viewing Mr. Erdogan through the eyes of the Alevis, however, highlights the complexities and paradoxes of both themes. Wary of Sunni dominance of public life, Alevis are key stakeholders in the secular Turkish state, and yet have suffered under staunchly secular governments, too. They exemplify the parts of Turkey that feel most threatened by Mr. Erdogan — secularists and minorities like the Kurds and Alevis — while highlighting both the authoritari... Link to the full article to read more