DOI: 10.4324/9781003269021‑13 148 11 THE ALEVI MOVEMENT IN EUROPE A Collective Struggle for Visibility, Rights, and Recognition Besim Can Zırh Introduction During an official four‑day visit to Turkey in 2014, Joachim Gauck, the president of Germany at that time, included a stop at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara on his itinerary. METU was not a particularly attention‑grabbing site compared to the other places he visited in Turkey, such as the mausoleum of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; a refugee camp on the outskirts of the southern city of Kahramanmaraş, where 300 German troops happened to be stationed to help with NATO missile defence batteries; or an inauguration event for a new Turkish‑German university to be opened in Istanbul. Nevertheless, Gauck’s relatively exclusive visit to the METU campus became the focus of public attention when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the then prime minister of Turkey, targeted the visit because of what was said there. In his address to METU academics and students, Gauck criticised the Turkish govern‑ ment for the social media ban. Erdoğan responded immediately: “I told the German presi‑ dent that we will never tolerate his interference in the internal affairs of our country” (DW 2014). “One should do whatever being a statesman requires. I suppose he still deems himself a pastor because he was a pastor at the time and he is looking with that view. These are aw‑ ful things” (Hürriyet Daily News 2014). Erdoğan’s response did not stop there. Abruptly turning his attention to the Alevis living in Europe, and especially in Germany, he continued: In Germany, there is something called ‘Alevism without Ali,’ 1 which is an atheist belief presented under the guise of Alevism, also supported by [Gauck], and he presented it to us. In Turkey, there is no such Alevism. [Gauck] spoke the way that a small group in Germany, supported by Germans, speaks. This is improper. (Hürriyet Daily News 2014) Why did Alevis, the second‑largest belief group in Turkey after Sunni Muslims (Lord 2022), suddenly become the focus of Erdoğan’s polemical response to the German president? What led to the European Alevis, and especially those in Germany, being perceived as a threat by