Some Remarks on Alevi Responses to the Missionaries in Eastern
Anatolia (19th-20th cc.)i Altruism and Imperialism: The Western
Religious and Cultural Missionary Enterprise in the Middle East
Middle East Institute Conference: Bellagio Italy This paper is
also published in Columbia International Affairs Online,
Columbia University Press, Mars 2001. In modern history the
Anatolian Alevis have become the target of missionary efforts
several times. The most important one in the late Ottoman period
was that by the American missionaries from the 1850s on. The
conspicuously warm response Alevis gave to Protestantism
contrasted with the reserved one they gave the Hanefite
missionaries of Sultan Abdulhamid in the 1890s. It contrasted
also with their anxious behaviour toward the early Republic that
developed a considerable missionary zeal in propagating its
ideal, mefkure, of positivist civilization and national society,
grafted on to the traditional ümmet. (Turkish for 'umma). Yet
many Alevis believed in the religious