Alawaites allege Ankara is biased When Burak Kaya lived in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, he pretended to be a Sunni Muslim. He said this was the only way to avoid discrimination by a government he felt viewed members of his Alawite religious sect as "secondary people" and treated them unfavourably. "I am a Kurd and an Alawite," Mr Kaya said, in an interview in the early spring chill in the southern town of Antakya, close to the Syrian border. So I am a minority in a minority. His words reflect a religious divide that runs across Turkish politics and society, even though the country identifies itself as a firmly secular state. It is a divide that, under Turkey's Islamist-rooted government, sometimes appears to be growing and has been highlighted by the unrest in neighbouring Syria. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, this week accused the leader of the country's opposition of being in sympathy with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, because the two men are both Alawites, a minority branch of Islam. "Don't forget that a person's religion is the religion of his friend," the Sunni Mr Erdogan said of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, who like many Alawites, is a member of Turkey's secular Republican People's party. "Turkey is not a secular state any more; it is a Sunni state," said Izzettin Dogan, the head of an Alawite federation that includes both Turkey's Alevi minority, who number in the millions, and Arabic-speaking Alawis in the border region, who are counted in the hundreds of thousands. People from both Alawite groups are unsettled by Mr Erdogan's stance on Syria and his demand that Mr Assad step down. Some Arabic speaking Alawis on the border openly support the Syrian president, although Mr Dogan both opposes Turkish intervention and calls Alawite domination of Syria unsustainable. But the prime minister's comments highlight the broader issue of minority rights in Turkey. Turkey was criticised this week for its "systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom" by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an official body that reports to the Obama administration. The commission based its verdict on the treatment of Christians, Jews and other religions, who account between them for 0.1 per cent of the country's 72m strong population but also on the lot of Turkey's Alawites, who according to different estimates number 10m-25m - no official statistics exist. Ankara has dismissed the findings as "null and void" and pointed out that the commission pushed through criticism of Turkey even though most of the body's members opposed that decision. But many of the commission's conclusions are echoed by Turkey's Alawite leaders. They complain that neither their spiritual leaders nor their places of worship are recognised, that their taxes subsidise Sunni clerics and that it has become increasingly difficult to secure official jobs, particularly since Mr Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party took office. There are marked cultural and religious differences between the two kinds of Alawites - for instance, music and dance is particularly important in Alevi rituals, something that Mr Dogan links to the shamanistic traditions of Central Asia. But both groups protest that the Turkish state effectively promotes Sunni Islam. Mr Dogan placed much of the blame on Ankara's powerful state religious affairs directorate, which he said had undue influence on Turkey's prime ministers. This body, a legacy of past governments" desire to control religion, today has an annual budget of TL3.9bn ($2.2bn) that pays the salaries of 59,000 imams - who earn more than teachers, regulates 85,000 mosques and provides guidance for Friday sermons. Alawite worship does not feature in its expenditures. Another longstanding complaint is that education in the precepts of Sunni Islam is compulsory for Alawite children. Ankara denies any discrimination against Alawites and has held workshops to address their concerns. "We don't have any prejudice," Mr Erdogan has said. As defined in the constitution our democratic, secular and state of law republic should stand at same distance to all faith groups. Internationally, Turkey has also issued repeated calls against sectarian divisions, whether in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere. But Mr Erdogan has also blamed Alawite judges for sending him to prison in the 1990s. The Turkish president last weekend cancelled a trip to Germany at short notice. His office said he decided to stay in Turkey because of the sudden death of 12 Turkish soldiers in Afghanistan. But by not travelling he also avoided a mass protest in Germany by thousands of Alawites.