Education Minister Nabi Avcı will attend a ceremony on March 14 marking the start of the building of the Hacı Bektaş Veli High School, where the main tenets of the Alevi and Bektashi faith will be taught, together with a modern school curriculum.
The school was one of the main requests submitted by Alevi groups to the government. The school will be built in Halkalı, Istanbul, on land allocated for that purpose by the ministry. The school will be built as a joint special-status project of the Education Ministry and the Dost Eli Aid, Education and Culture Foundation. The school will teach its pupils about the Alevi-Bektashi beliefs and aims to train babas and dedes, Alevi religious leaders.
According to reports, the school will have 600 students, 300 of whom will be boarders, drawn from across the country and the region, including the Balkans and Central Asia.
The curriculum will be prepared by the ministry and the Dost Eli Aid, Education and Culture Foundation. The school is a first in the country's Republican history. Alevis are believed to comprise about 20 percent of the population.
