The Cem ceremony

The Cem is the central communal worship ceremony of the Alevi, a large religious community rooted in Anatolia whose tradition draws on Shia Islam, Sufism and older Anatolian elements and differs markedly from Sunni practice. In place of the mosque and the five daily prayers, Alevi religious life centres on the cemevi, the "house of gathering," where the community assembles for the Cem, a ceremony led by a spiritual guide, the dede, believed to descend from the family of the Prophet. Men and women take part together, which distinguishes the Cem sharply from the gender-separated worship of many other Muslim communities, and the ceremony weaves together prayer, the recollection of Ali and the martyrs of Karbala, communal reconciliation, music and sacred dance.

At the heart of the Cem is the semah, a turning devotional dance performed by men and women together to the accompaniment of the saz, the long-necked lute whose playing and the sung poetry of the Alevi bards are integral to the worship rather than mere ornament. The ceremony includes the resolution of disputes within the community before worship may proceed, expressing the Alevi emphasis on being "at peace" with others, and it concludes with the sharing of blessed food. As a minority tradition that has faced long periods of suspicion and pressure, the Alevi have in the modern era sought recognition of the cemevi as a legitimate place of worship, a status still contested in Turkey, and the Cem remains the defining expression of a distinct and living faith.

Alevis form a distinct religious community within Turkey and its diaspora, holding beliefs and practices that diverge sharply from Sunni Islam, including the absence of the five daily prayers and the mosque in favour of the cemevi and the cem, and that history has made the ceremony as much a marker of communal identity as an act of worship.

Alevis faced serious persecution across Ottoman and later Turkish Republican history, including massacres associated with accusations of heresy and, more recently, violent attacks such as the 1993 Sivas incident in which a mob set fire to a hotel hosting an Alevi cultural festival, killing thirty-seven people, an event still commemorated within the community as a defining trauma. Partly because of that history, the cem was traditionally held privately and its details kept from outsiders, and cemevis lack the legal recognition given to mosques in Turkey, a status Alevi organisations have long campaigned to change. The dede who leads the ceremony inherits the office through descent from families claiming lineage to the Twelve Imams or to associated saintly figures, and dede lineages historically also served as arbiters of communal dispute outside the ceremony itself, so the reconciliation that must occur before the cem can proceed was historically backed by a dede's standing authority in the community's ordinary affairs, not only a ritual formality performed on the night. Migration to Germany and other European countries has produced cemevis and Alevi federations operating openly outside Turkey, where the community's legal recognition is often more secure than at home.