Qizilbashs as an opposition movement i̇n the XVI Century Ottoman Empire

The Anatolian geography have never been settled throughout the centuries beginning with the process of Islamization of the Turks and exposing the intense population mobility. One of the issues that emerge in this geography and which has profound effects on both the religious, political and socio-economic structure of the Ottoman Empire is the Qizilbash issue that we will try to examine in our thesis. Although the issue of Qizilbash seems to have taken place within the scope of belief and sectarian differences, this is more than that. The problematic of our study is the extent to which the Qizilbash issue changed the balance within the Ottoman Empire and how this process was reflected in the policy of the Ottoman Empire. In this context, this study will try to examine the emergence of the Qizilbash identity, the relationship of the Qizilbashs with the power in the sixteenth century and the Ottoman Empire's perspective on these communities. In doing so, it aims to shed some lights on the the complex and intertwined aspects of the issue by using archival documents and contemporary sources.