While Turkey goes to the polls for the referendum on constitutional amendments, citizens from Çorum’s predominantly Alevi village Yazır complain that the public school in the village has been damaged for ten years and they have to vote in the toilets of the school building. The villagers say they applied to the authorities about the issue but couldn’t have any answer yet.
Alevism is the second largest religious sect in Turkey, after Sunnism. Even so, they have been seen as a minority to be crushed and silenced by many governments and Sunni Islamist AKP government.
Mustafa Durmaz from the village stated that the government does not pay attention to the village because it mostly consists of Alevi people and the children go to the schools in other parts of the city. “The election bulletin specifies that the people vote in official buildings. This is why we cannot vote in mosques, cemevis (prayer houses of the Alevis) or anywhere else. We have to vote here (in the school toilets)”, Durmaz said.
