Why July 2?
July 2 is not an ordinary day on the calendar, but a turning point in the history of the Alevis.
It is the date on which the screams echoed within the walls of a burning hotel, and also the date of the words, the memory, the faith, the feelings, and the very existence that had been silenced for centuries.
In Sivas, it was not only people with bright faces (and children) who were burned; what was truly targeted for destruction was a philosophy, a thought, a truth, and faith itself, all rooted in centuries of tradition. On July 2, 1993, alongside the physical violence that Alevis had endured for centuries, another form of violence became starkly visible: epistemic violence. In other words, the prohibition and denial imposed on Alevis—the refusal to allow them to define themselves in their own language, with their own feelings and concepts; to produce their own knowledge; to shape their memory; and to create their own spaces. It is a form of knowledge-violence embedded in historical bans, denials, and anti-Alevi discrimination. It is precisely for this reason that the launch of the Alevi Encyclopedia on July 2, 2025 is no coincidence.
It is both the expression of a social reality with centuries-old roots and the outcome of contemporary Alevi Studies, which have become an international research field, making a vast body of literature accessible in a concise, simple, and comprehensible format within the reality of the digital age. The Alevi Encyclopedia is the effort of a consciousness that refuses to be confined by others’ definitions and instead asserts itself through its own concepts, words, knowledge, and its own world of meaning and feeling. Beyond massacres, denials, assimilation, and folklorization, it is a scholarly and collective step toward compiling knowledge of Alevism, carrying it into the future, and sharing it with the world.
Today, the Alevi Encyclopedia stands before us not only as a platform of knowledge, but also as a site of memory and a forum of the word.
What is the Alevi Encyclopedia?
The Alevi Encyclopedia is a multidimensional digital knowledge platform that began in April 2024 with the invitation of the Rıza Şehri Academy, continued with the participation and contributions of academics working in the field of Alevi Studies, and was finally launched on July 2, 2025. The Alevi Encyclopedia has assumed not only the task of collecting knowledge but also the historical responsibility of systematically classifying what exists and transmitting it to the future. The Encyclopedia rises upon two strong foundations that distinguish it from similar projects: academia and historical-social memory.
The first foundation is the encyclopedic dictionary section, based on academic and scientific knowledge production processes. Its aim is to bring the vast accumulation of Alevi Studies—particularly the rapidly increasing number of scholarly works produced over the last 40 years—to a broad readership, while adhering to academic standards. Entries on concepts, historical figures, rituals, places, and institutional structures are reviewed with the rigor of an academic journal. The goal is to produce short, concise entries in a format that every reader can easily understand.
For this purpose, the Alevi Encyclopedia has established a Scientific Advisory Board composed of distinguished professors and young researchers from various disciplines and regions around the world. Each entry undergoes an editorial process and is presented in a clear and holistic language that addresses not only the academic community but also all components of the Alevi community.
Currently published in Turkish and English, the Encyclopedia aims to expand soon into German, Kurmanci, Kırmancki, and French.
While the editorial board currently serves a founding role, following the 2nd Alevi Encyclopedia Symposium scheduled for October 2025, it will gain international legitimacy and strengthen its institutional structure.
The second dimension of the Encyclopedia is the collective memory section, based on the oral narratives of Alevi spiritual leaders (pirs & anas). This section compiles, through video recordings, the orally transmitted heritage of Alevi theology—its central concepts, teachings, prayers (gülbenk/deyiş), rituals, and moral universe, which have been passed down for centuries in different languages—and makes it accessible to humanity through the digital world. This represents a transmission of memory on a scale rarely seen in the history of the Alevi movement.
This memory has survived centuries of oppression, persecution, and massacres, carrying Alevi faith, philosophy, art, knowledge, and social reason into the present. In this way, the Alevi Encyclopedia not only transmits knowledge but also renews the truth borne by the İkrar, the stance against oppression, the struggle against injustice—in short, a collective form of existence.
What Is Published? First Group of Content and Contributors
The Alevi Encyclopedia begins its digital publication life with a strong pool of content. As of the launch date, July 2, 2025, the platform contains a total of 74 videos and 58 entries. These contents offer a multi-layered representation of the world of Alevi faith, history, memory, and everyday practices.
The articles and videos published in the first phase cover a very wide thematic range: the Alevi belief system and its teachings, ocak structures, sacred places (jiare), ritual practices, historical turning points, the role of women in faith, the transformations of Alevism in the diaspora, and the struggles of transmission among new generations—these are just a few examples. Each contribution has been carefully crafted and presents in-depth perspectives reflecting the ethnocultural diversity, geographical spread, and historical continuity of the Alevi community.
The first group of content has been created by a broad and diverse pool of authors and narrators. Renowned national and international academics, young researchers, Alevi spiritual leaders (pirs and anas), institutional representatives, intellectuals, and writers have contributed to this process. This participatory foundation aims not only to produce knowledge but also to expand a collective space of the word.
In this sense, the first publications of the Alevi Encyclopedia are not a beginning for either the academic world or the Alevi community, but rather a threshold where a long-standing need and longing have become visible.
Publication Schedule of the Alevi Encyclopedia
The Alevi Encyclopedia can be considered similar in function to a peer-reviewed publication. Instead of irregular and scattered content submissions, regular and collective publication phases are planned at specific intervals. This method facilitates both compliance with the academic framework in the editorial process and the scholarly oversight of content; it corresponds to the working rhythm of the academic world and makes production both planned and predictable.
Accordingly, the publication schedule for the 2025–2026 period has been set as follows:
1. Content Group: July 2, 2025
2. Content Group: October 5, 2025 (Submission deadline: September 15, 2025)
3. Content Group: January 15, 2026
4. Content Group: April 15, 2026
5. Content Group: July 15, 2026
6. Content Group: October 15, 2026
Preparations continue for organizing the 2nd Pirs and Anas Workshop and related events in Turkey and Europe, in order to add new videos to the section Alevism in the Words of Spiritual Leaders.
A New Era in the Alevi Movement
The Alevi Encyclopedia is not only a work of memory that records the past, but also a living archive oriented toward the future and prioritizing transmission. In this respect, it should not be seen as a static bank of knowledge but as a dynamic structure shaped by the continuity of collective intellect, feeling, and resistance.
It must be remembered that in Alevism the “word”—what is spoken and passed down orally—holds a central place. For this reason, the Alevi Encyclopedia is one of the instruments through which oral memory is transformed into written and digital form and carried into the future. This chain of words—from gülbenks to deyiş, from ocak narratives to sacred places, from historical traumas to ethical codes—will no longer be passed on solely from mouth to mouth, but will be accessible everywhere in the world and, over time, in many languages.
This Encyclopedia is an intellectual response and a social stance against colonial, exclusionary, and manipulative approaches that seek to subject knowledge of Alevism to external categories. It is a turning point where the claim of epistemic independence, the right to formulate one’s own knowledge with one’s own concepts, and the will to create collective memory from within itself become concrete.
The Alevi Encyclopedia is the platform of those who seek not only to shape the present but also to build the future. And this path, like Alevism itself, is not a fixed place, but a journey, a flow, a search for truth. Therefore, this platform is not a beginning but the digital form of a word transmitted for centuries, taking shape at this scale for the first time.
Alevi Encyclopedia – Founding Editorial Board
