Dear colleagues, friends, and partners,
The year 2025 has marked not merely a publication milestone for the Alevi Encyclopedia but a decisive historical threshold in the institutionalisation of a long-term, collective, and international knowledge project.
Although the Alevi Encyclopedia officially went online on 2 July 2025, this launch was the outcome of an intensive preparatory process extending over more than a year, shaped by dialogue, debate, and collaborative knowledge production. Prior to publication, the First Alevi Encyclopedia Symposium, held in Dortmund in November 2024, provided a crucial forum for collectively discussing the conceptual framework, scope, and editorial principles of the project. This was followed in May 2025 by the First Workshop of Pirs and Anas, again in Dortmund, which constituted a foundational step by directly integrating the knowledge, memory, and lived experiences of Alevi religious leaders into the encyclopedia’s production process.
Following the launch, the Second Alevi Encyclopedia Symposium, held in October 2025, brought together around sixty international scholars over the course of three days. This event marked a new phase in Alevi Studies, foregrounding scientific solidarity, collective knowledge production, and digital publishing. In parallel, the Alevi Encyclopedia established a renewed and strengthened international Editorial Board and today rests on an exceptionally solid academic foundation, supported by a Scientific Advisory Board of nearly one hundred internationally recognised scholars whose work has significantly shaped the field of Alevi Studies.
In the six months since its launch in July 2025, the Alevi Encyclopedia has reached an average of 1,500–2,000 unique visitors per day, clearly demonstrating the extent to which it addresses a long-standing gap in the field. This level of engagement reflects the strong demand—both within academic circles and among Alevi communities—for reliable, high-quality, and accessible knowledge. The encyclopedia continues to develop in close dialogue with universities, research institutions, and international scholarly networks, with the explicit aim of positioning Alevi Studies as a visible and respected field within the broader landscape of the humanities.
Moving beyond classical encyclopedic models, the Alevi Encyclopedia seeks to enable the production of knowledge from within Alevi communities themselves—rooted in their own voices, meanings, and affective worlds—while remaining firmly committed to scientific standards and academic rigor. It takes as a core principle the representation of the full diversity of Alevi geographies, traditions, languages, and historical experiences, spanning from the Balkans to Anatolia, from the Caucasus and the Middle East to European diasporic contexts and beyond.
At present, the Alevi Encyclopedia is an open-access platform published in Turkish and English, with German scheduled to be added in the near future, alongside further languages. In this sense, the encyclopedia is not merely an archive of information but a living, evolving digital space of memory—one that connects generations, geographies, and disciplinary perspectives.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all scholars, researchers, pirs, anas, community leaders, editorial board members, and supporting institutions and individuals who have contributed to bringing the Alevi Encyclopedia to its current stage. We look forward to further strengthening this collective endeavour in 2026 and to expanding the horizons of Alevi knowledge together.
With our best wishes for a new year marked by scientific solidarity, collective production, and pluralistic knowledge,
Sincerely,
The Alevi Encyclopedia
December 2025
