TIRANA (Reuters) – Albania will create a sovereign Muslim state in Tirana for the Bektashi religious order, along the lines of the Vatican in Rome, to preserve and promote religious tolerance, Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Saturday.
If created, the enclave for the Islamic Sufi order would be one of the world’s smallest states, and would have its own administration but no taxation or police and would not challenge the sovereignty of Albania, Rama said.
“The history of the Bektashi is in itself an imposing call to give the holy seat of the Bektashi World Center a status similar to that of the Vatican,” Rama said during a ceremony to mark the 95th anniversary of the move of the holy seat to Albania from Turkey.
Rama said the symbolic state would be “without walls, without police, without an army, without taxes or other attributes, but a headquarters, a spiritual state”.
He did not give details on timing and the Albanian parliament would need to endorse the plan.
Founded in the Ottoman Empire in the thirteenth century as an offshoot of Sufism, the Bektashi order has been headquartered in Albania since 1929 after the newly created Turkish Republic of Kemal Ataturk prevented it from practising.
Rama said last year that Albania planned to create a state in the eastern part of the country’s capital as a spiritual centre for the Bektashis, who are scattered across the region in Kosovo and North Macedonia as well as in Albania.
About 10% of the country’s population is Bektashi according to the last census.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci and Florion Goga, writing by Lefteris Papadimas; editing by Barbara Lewis)
