32 Years Ago, the Madımak Massacre

32 years ago, the Madımak massacre

On July 2, 1993, 33 people, including artists, intellectuals, and two employees, were burned to death or suffocated when an Islamist mob threw incendiary devices into the Madımak Hotel in the central Anatolian city of Sivas. On that day, as in previous years, a cultural festival was held in honor of Pir Sultan Abdal, a spiritual figurehead of the Alevi community. Abdal was a 16th-century folk poet and freedom fighter who expressed the social, cu…