The Sultan abolished the Bektashi order in 1826 and gave its lodges away, Atatürk closed the rest in 1925, and in 2024 Albania proposed a sovereign state for its leader

The Bektashi order was the Sufi order of the Janissaries. In 1826 Sultan Mahmud II destroyed the Janissary corps and banned the Bektashis throughout the empire. Many dervishes were exiled and some executed. Lodges were destroyed, their endowment revenues confiscated, and many lodges handed to the orthodox Naqshbandi order or sold for the treasury. The order recovered slowly under the Tanzimat reforms. On 30 November 1925 Turkey's Law 677 closed and sealed all tekkes and Sufi tombs, including the mother lodge at Hacıbektaş. The order's head, Salih Niyazi, moved to Albania. In 1930 the Albanian parliament approved the community's statute and Niyazi set up the world headquarters in Tirana; he was murdered in 1941. The communists executed several babas and dervishes after 1945, and in 1967 Enver Hoxha closed every tekke when he banned religion. The ban ended in 1990, and the lodges were reclaimed. Baba Mondi, Edmond Brahimaj, has led the order since 2011. Turkish Bektashis do not recognize the Tirana leadership. On 22 September 2024 Prime Minister Edi Rama told the United Nations that Albania would create a Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order of about 10 hectares in Tirana, with passports but no army. Wikipedia lists it as proposed in 2026^†.