The cem is the central rite, and almost everything distinctive about Alevism is visible in it.
It is held in a cemevi, an assembly house, not a mosque. Men and women take part together, without segregation, the practice that most sharply marks Alevism off from Sunni orthodoxy and that has attracted the most hostility. It is conducted in Turkish, Zazaki and Kurdish rather than in Arabic. It is built around music: the saz, the long-necked lute, is a sacred instrument, and the sung poems called nefes carry the doctrine, which is transmitted in performance rather than fixed in a canon. It includes the semah, a turning ritual dance performed by men and women together, and it is structured around twelve ritual services distributed among the participants.
Authority is hereditary and initiatory rather than bureaucratic. A dede is a spiritual teacher, traditionally of an ocak lineage claiming descent from Ali and Fatima, who leads the cem, teaches, and arbitrates disputes within the community. The Bektashi structure adds ranks running through dervish and baba to a supreme dedebaba, whose seat is now at the Bektashi centre in Albania. There is no single governing body, and modern Alevi federations and foundations operate alongside the dede system rather than replacing it.
The Turkish state has long refused to recognise cemevis as places of worship on the footing that mosques enjoy, which means no share of the public funding that the state religious directorate distributes, funded in part by Alevi taxes. In 2022 the state recognised Alevism as a cultural group and created a presidency for Alevi and Bektashi culture under the ministry of culture. Alevi organisations largely reject the arrangement, for the obvious reason that culture is precisely not worship.