WITH the Census taking place on March 21st the countdown to has become. Since last summer in a joined effect, the Alevi community has been campaign and call for the recognition of Alevism in the census 2021’s faith section.
With the census for the first take place online now means that when selecting other religions on the form when you are asked to fill out which religion, Alevi will not be available when you type it in. On the paper forms, you will need to write Alevi under the other option on the faith catalogue.
In the past week members from the British Alevi Federation (BAF), London Alevi Cultural Centre and Cemevi (IAKMC) and Enfield Alevi Cultural Centre have travelled across the UK to join together with Alevi communities in Croydon, Brighton, Bournemouth, Newport, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, Hull, Doncaster, Sheffield, Nottingham, Northamptonshire, Leicester, Harrow
In statements before the campaign BAF chair, Israfil Erbil’s said “Since 2015 it has been officially recognised that Alevis exist, their place of worship is the Cemevi and their worship is the Cem. To fulfil the meaning of these statements we must demonstrate the size of our population. If we do not exist in the population, there is no meaning behind the rights we have received…”
IAKMC chair Zeynel Akdogan said “Due to the fact that the census forms are a bit detailed and long, our friends are ready to help everyone at the desks set up from 10 am to 5 pm so that nobody will have trouble filling out the forms.
I am calling out to all our Alevi citizens, if you have difficulty filling in the forms
yourself, let’s fill them out here together.” Adding “the census forms is very important for shaping the future of our society. Filling out these forms
is mandatory by law, but it should be doubly mandatory for us Alevis. We have to fill in these forms not just because they are required by British law, but because we have been ignored for thousands of years…”
The Enfield Alevi Cultural Centre chair Zeynep Demir said: “…We came here for many reasons. For 30 years we have been in the struggle of being an Alevi in Britain, we have been struggling to survive. We are in a struggle of being women. We struggle to exist in the countries we come from. We need identity as much as we need.”
For more information about the census in Turkish, you can visit this link here