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Dersim massacre

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Dersim massacre
Part of Kurdish–Turkish conflict
Native nameTertele
LocationDersim Region (modern-day Tunceli Province, Turkey)
Date1 May 1937 (1937-05-01) – 1 September 1938 (1938-09-01)
TargetCivilians of Dersim:[1]
Attack type
Genocide (mass killings, mass rape, destruction of livestock and homes, forced deportation, abduction of girls, forced assimilation, cultural destruction)
WeaponsHeavy artillery, aerial bombardment, chemical gas, small arms, bayonets, arson
Deaths13,806–70,000 (estimates vary)
InjuredWidespread rape and sexual violence,[2][3] thousands injured and disabled[4]
Victims11,818–50,000 forcibly resettled[5]
PerpetratorsTurkish Armed Forces
MotiveSuppression of rebellion, anti-Kurdish sentiment, Turkish nationalism, anti-tribalism, Turkification, forced assimilation, demographic engineering[6]
AccusedTurkish government
Turkish Armed Forces
Image
Turkish soldiers with civilians who official documents say were internally exiled; Salman Yeşildağ said they included his sister and were executed after the photo was taken.[7]

The Dersim massacre,[8][9] also known as the Dersim genocide,[10] was carried out by the Turkish military over the course of three operations in the Dersim Province (renamed Tunceli) against Kurdish rebels of Alevi faith, and civilians in 1937 and 1938. Although most Kurds in Dersim remained in their home villages,[11] thousands were killed and many others were expelled to other parts of Turkey.[12] Twenty tons of "Chloracetophenon, Iperit and so on" were ordered and used in the massacre.[13][14] According to Turkish Army general Osman Pamukoğlu in the 1990s, the Dersim massacre was carried on the operational order of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.[15]

On 23 November 2011, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apologized for the massacre, describing it as "one of the most tragic events of our near history" adding that, whilst some sought to justify it as a legitimate response to events on the ground, it was in reality "an operation which was planned step by step". However, this is viewed with suspicion by some, "who see it as an opportunistic move against the main opposition party, the secular CHP", and specifically against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, an Alevi with roots in the region.[16][17]

Background

Ottoman period

Kurdish tribes, which were feudal (manorial) communities led by chieftains (agha) during the Ottoman period, enjoyed a certain degree of freedom within the boundaries of the manors owned by the aghas. Local authority in these small manorial communities was in the hands of feudal lords, tribal chieftains and other dignitaries, who owned the land and ruled over the serfs who lived and worked on their estates.[20] However, the general political authority in the provinces, such as Dersim, was in the hands of the Ottoman government.

Early republican era

Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, some Kurdish tribes became unhappy about certain aspects of Atatürk's "Kemalist policies", described as "the ideology of the new political élite tied to the single-party régime", imposing a policy of Turkification, including the removal of functionaries of "Kurdish race" in Turkish Kurdistan[21][22][23][24] and land reform,[25] and staged armed revolts that were put down by the Turkish military.[citation needed]

Dersim had been a particularly difficult province for the Ottoman government to control, with 11 different armed rebellions between 1876 and 1923.[26]: 207–208 [27] The rebellious stance of the aghas in Dersim continued during the early years of the Republic of Turkey. Aghas in Dersim objected to losing authority in their manorial affairs and refused to pay taxes; and complaints from the provincial governors in Dersim were sent to the central government in Ankara,[28] which favoured land reform and direct control over the country's farmlands, as well as state planning for agricultural production.[25] In an Interior Ministry report in 1926, it was considered necessary to use force against the aghas of Dersim.[29] Historically, the majority of Dersim spoke Zaza, while a minority spoke Kurmanji, although it changed after the imposition of the Turkish language and bans on minority languages.[30]

Hasan Reşit Tankut wrote the "Sociological study on the Zaza" in 1932, considered one of the first studies concerning Dersim, which was written in the preparation phase of the operation and massacre. Tankut presented Dersim as a region populated by a distinct people known as Zazas, and explicitly drew on Ziya Gökalp. While Gökalp depicted the Zazas as particularly easy to assimilate into the Turkish nation, Tankut characterized Dersim as geographically wild and alien, claiming that the Zazas lived "between Paradise and Hell." Despite also denying the Armenian genocide, Tankut alleged that many Armenians took refuge in Dersim.[31] 10,000 to 30,000 Armenians had taken refuge in Dersim during the Armenian genocide and, although most left for Soviet Armenia, a few remained in Dersim and the massacre also targeted them.[32] The 1927 Turkish census had recorded 556 Armenian-speakers living there.[33] On 1 November 1936, during a speech in parliament, Atatürk described Dersim as Turkey's most important interior problem.[34]

Resettlement Law

The Turkification process began with the 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law.[35] Its measures included the forced relocation of people within Turkey, with the aim of promoting cultural homogeneity. In 1935, the Tunceli Law was passed to apply the Resettlement Law to the newly named region of Tunceli, previously known as Dersim and populated by Kurdish Alevis.[36] This area had a reputation for being rebellious, having been the scene of eleven separate periods of armed conflict over the previous 40 years.[26][27]

"Tunceli" law

The Dersim region included the Tunceli Province whose name was changed from Dersim to Tunceli with the "Law on Administration of the Tunceli Province" (Tunceli Vilayetinin İdaresi Hakkında Kanun), no. 2884 of 25 December 1935[37] on 4 January 1936.[38]

Fourth General Inspectorate

In order to consolidate its authority in the process of Turkification and Islamitization of religious and ethnic minorities,[39][40] the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed Law No. 1164 on 25 June 1927[41] which allowed the state to establish Inspectorates-General.[42] Following the First Inspectorate-General (1 January 1928, Diyarbakır Province),[43] the Second Inspectorate-General (19 February 1934, Edirne Province)[44] and the Third Inspectorate-General (25 August 1935, Erzurum Province),[45][46] the Fourth Inspectorate-General (Dördüncü Umumi Müfettişlik) was established in January 1936, in the traditional Dersim region, which includes Tunceli Province, Elazığ Province and Bingöl Province.[47] The Fourth Inspectorate-General was governed by a "Governor Commander" within a military authority. He was given wide-ranging authority in juridical, military and civilian matters. He also had the power to resettle or exile people who lived in the region.[42] To quell the rebellion, the Turkish Interior Minister Sükrü Kaya ordered that boys and girls of the Dersim region were to be educated in boarding schools outside of the Dersim region.[48] In those schools, they were to be Turkified and following their graduation, married off to each other.[48] Women were to be Turkified at an earlier stage than men as women lacked contact with the outside world and if not Turkified, were unable to pass the Turkishness on to their children.[48] In September 1937, the Elazig Girls' Institute in which the aim was to raise Turkish women out of Kurdish girls was established in Elazıg.[48]

On 1 November 1936, during a speech in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Atatürk described the situation in Dersim as Turkey's most important internal problem.[49]

The legal framework for the operations predated the events of March 1937 by well over a year. Interior Ministry inspector Hamdi Bey had described Dersim in a 1926 report as a "boil" requiring "a radical operation", and on 26 December 1935, the day after the Tunceli Law was passed, the journalist Falih Rıfkı Atay wrote in Ulus that it was not a response to rebellion but a radical remedy for a chronic disease. The Fourth General Inspectorate was established on 6 January 1936, and General Abdullah Alpdoğan arrived in Elazığ as its inspector, commander and governor on 1 February. Throughout 1936 he oversaw the construction of military outposts, barracks and roads, and a weapons-collection campaign carried out with disproportionate violence.[50]

The rebellion

Image
A 1937 map of Dersim showing the central district, Hozat

After the "Tunceli" Law, the Turkish military built observation posts in certain districts. Following public meetings in January 1937, a letter of protest against the law was written to be sent to the local governor. According to Kurdish sources, the emissaries of the letter were arrested and executed. In May, a group of local people ambushed a police convoy in response.[51]

Meeting at Halbori cells

Seyid Riza, the chieftain of Yukarı Abbas Uşağı, sent his followers to the Haydaran, Demenan, Yusufan, and Kureyşan tribes to make an alliance.[52]

According to Turkish authorities, on 20–21 March 1937, at 23:00 hrs, the Demenan and Haydaran tribes broke a bridge connecting Pah and Kahmut in the Harçik Valley. The Inspector General gave the order to prepare for action to the 2nd Mobile Gendarmerie Battalion at Pülümür, the 3rd Mobile Gendarmerie Battalion at Pülür, the 9th Gendarmier Battalion at Mazkirt, and the Mobile Gendarmerie Regiment at Hozat, and sent one infantry company of the 9th Mobile Gendarmier Battalion to Pah.[52]

Turkish military operations

Image
Sabiha Gökçen holding a bomb before the bombardment operation over Dersim with her Breguet 19
Image
Sabiha Gökçen and her colleagues in front of a Breguet 19, 1937–38
Image
Local people of Dersim, 1938

Around 25,000 troops were deployed to quell the rebellion. This task was substantially completed by the summer and the leaders of the rebellion, including tribal leader Seyid Riza, were hanged. However, remnants of the rebel forces continued to resist and the number of troops in the region was doubled. The area was also bombed from the air.[26] The rebels continued to resist until they ran out of ammunition, in late 1938, by which time the region was devastated.[53]

According to Osman Pamukoğlu, formerly a general in the Turkish Army and an advocate of the depopulation of Kurdish-majority rural areas as part of the state's counterinsurgency strategy, Atatürk had given the operational order himself for the operation.[15]

1937

On 4 May 1937 the Council of Ministers resolved on "a harsh and effective offensive" in Dersim aimed at the "complete destruction of villages and the displacement of families", marking the official start of the military operations. From that summer the national press presented the campaign as a military success against criminality and anarchy and portrayed Seyid Riza as a feudal lord and tyrant leading a rebellion.[54]

First Dersim Operation

The state and the press portrayed Seyid Riza as a rebel, traitor and bandit. Recent studies argue this was inaccurate, since in his last years Riza had no organised armed force and was surrounded mainly by unarmed family members, tribesmen and sharecroppers under his responsibility. On 9 July 1937 Alişer Efendi, a Koçgiri veteran, poet and Alevi sage who had been living in hiding in Dersim, was killed by his closest friends on the state's orders. On 17 August a military operation struck Riza's family near Bırdo village, between Hozat and Ovacık; most of them, mainly women and children, were bombed and shot, and only three children escaped, while Riza and a few men got away. On 26 August the Bahtiyaran chieftain Şahin ("Saan Ağa") was killed by two of his most trusted relatives, again on the state's orders.[55]

Riza was captured with two companions at the entrance to Erzincan on 10 September 1937. Two explanations of his journey circulated: that he meant to negotiate through the governor of Erzincan, Mehmet Fahri Özen, with whom he reportedly had a long-standing relationship of trust and from whom he may have received an invitation, or that he was trying to flee toward the Soviet Union. Bilmez finds the second less credible given the tight border controls, and reads the first as a calculated decision rather than submission. Riza distrusted Alpdoğan, had seen his family massacred, and chose Erzincan over the nearby provincial centre of Elazığ and its military units, apparently to persuade the authorities of his innocence and spare his people further bloodshed. After his capture Riza reportedly asked to meet the governor, and may have hoped for an audience with Atatürk. According to local memory and press reports, he expected to be taken to Ankara, but was transported to Elazığ instead. The lack of official documents makes these accounts hard to verify.[55]

Riza and the other detainees were tried in Elazığ on charges of rebellion under extraordinary procedures. 58 defendants were tried, 11 were sentenced to death, four of those sentences were commuted to life imprisonment because of age, and seven men were executed on 15 November 1937. Several of those executed had earlier surrendered or cooperated with the authorities, and Riza's son Hüseyin was arrested when he went to visit his father in prison. Under the General Inspectorate Law, Alpdoğan's approval was enough to carry out the sentences and no appeal was allowed. According to one claim, Alpdoğan signed a blank page marked "approved" before the verdict was issued. The court convened just after midnight on a Sunday, and the executions followed immediately in Elazığ's Wheat Market Square (Buğday Pazarı Meydanı), with Riza forced to watch his son's execution before his own. His reported last words, recorded in Çağlayangil's memoirs, declared the condemned to be descendants of Karbala, blameless and innocent, and called their execution a shame, a tyranny and a murder. Rumours that Riza was secretly brought before Atatürk before his execution are unsupported by concrete evidence, but Çağlayangil's memoirs say that Atatürk, on seeing photographs of the executions, ordered them destroyed.[56]

Ihsan Sabri Çağlayangil, who would later become foreign minister,[57] arranged the trials and hanging of the leaders of the rebellion and some of their sons.[58]

They were:

  • Seyit Rıza
  • Resik Hüseyin (Seyit Rıza's son, 16 years old)
  • Seyit Hüseyin (the chieftain of Kureyşan-Seyhan tribe)
  • Fındık Aga (Yusfanlı Kamer Aga's son)
  • Hasan Aga (of the Demenan tribe, Cebrail Ağa's son)
  • Hasan (a Kureyşan tribesman Ulkiye's son)
  • Ali Aga (Mirza Ali's son)

On 17 November 1937, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk came to Pertek to take part in the opening ceremony for the Singeç Bridge.[59][60] In his journey to Elazığ the same month, he was accompanied by the Minister of the Interior Şükrü Kaya and Sabiha Gökçen.[61]

1938

Winter and spring 1938

The survivors in inner Dersim faced a harsh winter in 1937–38 in the wake of village burnings, bombings and mass exile. Many took refuge in the mountains under harsh conditions, while those who remained in the villages had lost their religious and tribal leaders and waited in fear, uncertain of their fate. In spring, the garrisons and outposts built the previous year, together with units of the Fourth Inspectorate, carried out operations against people on the run or on wanted lists, often families sheltering in the mountains. Tribes in areas the army had not entered in 1937 increasingly expected to be targeted, and as summer approached these operations sometimes escalated into clashes with those in the mountains.[62]

Summer 1938 sweep

The forces under Alpdoğan, by now firmly established in the region, did not confine themselves to the seasonal "law enforcement" campaigns of earlier years. Ankara planned a large-scale "sweep" using the Third Army, based in Erzincan, and the area to be cleared was far larger than in 1937, when operations had centred on six tribes (Bahtiyaran, Demenan, Haydaran, Kureyşan, Yukarı Abasan and Yusufan); it now included districts the army had not yet penetrated. The operation was officially termed a military maneuver.[63]

In July and August 1938 civilians, especially women and children, were gathered almost daily at chosen places and killed by shooting, bayoneting or being thrown from cliffs, sometimes in groups of hundreds. Most of the 120 massacre sites and incidents catalogued by the scholars Bilmez and Cemal, Taş date to this summer. Many villages, with their homes and fields, were burned, and livestock was confiscated or destroyed, removing the minimum conditions for survivors to continue living there. In settlements that had sheltered the army or allied with its commanders, people were shut into enclosed spaces and burned alive, among them children, the elderly and women. Girls were separated from their families and taken by civilian and military officials, and thousands of people from a much wider area than in 1937 were deported.[64]

An Interior Ministry document of 1938 records 13,160 civilians killed that year and lists 2,254 exiled households, 11,918 people in total, under the heading "those going west". In a letter to the General Staff dated 4 November 1938, the Third Army commander Kâzım Orbay reported that the "maneuver", which lasted 17 days, had removed 7,954 people, dead and alive, from the sweep area; of 101 people named by the Fourth Inspectorate, 75 had been captured, and 1,019 weapons had been collected. The press, which had earlier defended the state's account in terms of rebellion, feudalism and primitiveness, went along with the official description of the operation as a "military maneuver".[64]

Autumn 1938

After victory celebrations in Elazığ on 30 August 1938, Third Army units returning to their bases in Erzincan carried out a second "screening" operation, destroying groups and villages that had survived the summer. The Fourth Inspectorate's forces, whose control of the region was growing, continued operations based on intelligence networks, collaborators and local information, to capture and exile armed individuals and small groups of fugitives who had taken refuge in the mountains; in the villages the region was effectively in a continuous state of war. In September 1938 Riza's nephew Rayber, who had cooperated with the state, was tortured and killed.[65]

Aerial bombardment and chemical weapons

The area was bombed from the air, and the aerial bombardments caused significant civilian casualties in 1937. On 17 August 1937 Seyid Riza's family was bombed and shot near Bırdo village, and only three children escaped. The press nevertheless celebrated the operation's success. Bombing continued to accompany the village burnings and deportations that left the survivors of inner Dersim sheltering in the mountains through the winter of 1937–38.[66]

Kurdish leader Nuri Dersimi claimed that the Turkish air force bombed the district with poisonous gas in 1938.[67] Bilmez writes that hundreds of villages were evacuated or burned, and that people who had taken refuge in the mountains were killed by bombs, bullets and poison gas.[68]

On 30 March 1937, ten days after the first operation began, Alpdoğan informed the prime minister's office that he had asked the air regiment for incendiaries and the Ministry of National Defence for "burning and suffocating gas bombs".[69] On 7 August 1937 the Council of Ministers approved the purchase from Germany of about 20 tons of chloracetophenone, mustard gas and similar agents, with equipment for filling aircraft bombs.[69] Bilmez and Deniz both state that poison gas was used against civilians.[68][70]

Çağlayangil, who as Malatya's police chief took part in the execution of Seyid Riza, said in a 1986 recorded interview with Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu that people had taken refuge in caves and that the army used poison gas at the cave entrances and killed civilians of all ages who had taken shelter in the caves.[71]

Muhsin Batur, engaged in massacres for about two months over Dersim, stated in his memoirs that he wanted to avoid talking about this part of his life.[72][better source needed]

Massacres

According to an official report of the Fourth General Inspectorate, 13,160 civilians were killed by the Turkish Army and 11,818 people were taken into exile, depopulating the province.[73] According to a claim by Nuri Dersimi, many tribesmen were shot dead after surrendering, and women and children were locked into haysheds which were then set on fire.[74] Christian Gerlach reports that 30,000 Kurds were massacred by the Turkish Army after the rebellion.[75]

Hüseyin Aygün, a jurist author, wrote in his book Dersim 1938 and Obligatory Settlement: "The rebellion was clearly caused by provocation. It caused the most violent tortures that were ever seen in a rebellion in the Republican years. Those who didn't take part in the rebellion, and the families of the rebels, were also tortured."[76]

In Hozat, a soldier later recalled that, after officers disagreed over what to do with women and children who had not disclosed where the men were, the troops were ordered to annihilate all they could apprehend; he said they locked women, girls and children in a mosque, sprayed it with kerosene and burned them alive. The British vice-consul in Trabzon reported on 27 September 1938 that, according to various sources, thousands of Kurds including women and children had been killed, some children having been thrown into the Euphrates.[77]

Deportations

Around 3,000 people were forcibly deported from Dersim.[36] On 4 May 1938 a Turkish Cabinet decision resolved that Turkish military forces which had previously been massed in the area would attack Nazimiye, Keçigezek Sin and Karaoglan. "This time all the people in the area will be collected and deported out of the area and this collection operation will attack the villages without warning and collect the people. To do this, we will collect the people as well as the arms they have. At the moment, we are ready to deport 2,000 people." In the same decision ordering to respond to any resistance by rendering those "incapable of movement on the spot and until the end", İsmail Beşikçi concludes this meant to kill them, along with orders to destroy their homes and deporting those remaining.[78]

The exiles of 1938 were drawn from a much wider area than in 1937 and were sent to places chosen to sever their ties to one another and to their language and culture. A 1938 document lists 2,254 exiled households under the heading "those going west", totalling 11,918 people.[64] The deportees were dispersed among 922 villages, mostly Turkish-populated, in 50 districts of 15 provinces, with families separated and kept apart for years. Tribes including the Haydaran and Hesenan were reportedly massacred on the journey west.[79]

Abduction of Girls

Many girls were also separated from their families and abducted by civilian or military officials. The number and fate of most are unknown because the sources remain inaccessible, but research by Nebahat and Kazım Gündoğan has traced a number of "lost daughters" decades after their abduction by officials' families.[64]

According to anthropologist Dilşa Deniz, thousands of children, not only girls, were taken by the military and distributed among army personnel, and that their fate is unknown.[79] She also writes that widespread sexual violence against women also took place, but that it remains poorly documented because both the state and the affected communities have stayed silent about it, partly out of shame.[3]

Aftermath, 1939–1947

Exile and cultural loss

The exiles of 1938 were sent to places chosen to cut their ties to one another and to their language and culture as quickly as possible. Many areas of inner Dersim remained forbidden zones, and the deported were not allowed to return until an amnesty in 1947. The religious and tribal figures who had transmitted Alevi practice, including those of the ocak lodge system, had been killed or exiled, and the practices that depended on them began to collapse. Exiles lived under constant surveillance and social pressure to abandon their language, beliefs and way of life.[80]

Silence and denial

In November 1937, after the executions in Elazığ, the editor of Cumhuriyet, Yunus Nadi, declared the "Dersim question" closed for good. The press that had framed the campaign as a feudal rebellion went along with the official description of the summer 1938 sweep as a "military maneuver", and the killings drew almost no international reaction. For decades the events were ignored in Turkish historiography or presented as the suppression of a reactionary rebellion, while Dersim's inhabitants remembered them as Tertele and passed the memory down through generations. The subject returned to Turkish public debate in 2009, when an opposition politician cited the suppression of Dersim as a model for the fight against terrorism, and again in 2011, when Prime Minister Erdoğan apologised.[81]

Death toll

The contemporary British estimate of the number of deaths was 40,000, although McDowall writes that this could be exaggerated.[26] It has been suggested that the total number of deaths may be 7,594,[36] over 10,000.[82] In 2011, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged that 13,806 citizens had been murdered and 11,683 individuals displaced—these figures were based on contemporary Turkish documents.[83]

Turkish Kurdish anthropologist Dilşa Deniz estimates the number of deaths to be between 46,000 and 63,000.[84][85][86][87][88][full citation needed][89][90][91] Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that 40,000 is implausibly high.[92] Historian Annika Törne estimates 32,000 to 70,000 dead as a result of massacres,[93][page needed] citing as sources among others Nicole Watts (Relocating Dersim: Turkish State-Building and Kurdish Resistance, 1931–1938, in: New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (2000), S. 5–30.)

Historiography

Turkish government

Turkish state's reaction to the uprising was publicly justified as "disciplining and punishment" (tedip ve tenkil). It contributed to a Kemalist perception of Dersim and its populace, which characterises the province as unruly and defends violent state intervention. This narrative is encountered in Naşit Hakkı Uluğ's book The Feudal Lord and Dersim (Derebeyi ve Dersim), which depicts Dersim as a security threat to the Turkish Republic.[94] It was not until 2009 that the massacre was publicly acknowledged, and in recent years, oral history has been used as a method to study anti-civilian violence excluded from the official history of the event.[95]

On 23 November 2011, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized "on behalf of the state" over the killing of over 13,000 people during the rebellion.[96] His remarks were widely commented on both inside and outside Turkey.[97] His comments were pointedly directed at opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (who in fact is from Tunceli). Erdogan reminded his audience that Kılıçdaroğlu's party, the CHP, had been in power at the time of the massacre, then the only political party in Turkey.[16] He described the massacre as "one of the most tragic events of our near history" saying that, whilst some sought to justify it as a legitimate response to events on the ground, it was in reality "an operation which was planned step by step".[98]

Genocide debate

Among the Zazas, it is known as "Tertele Dersim", meaning the "Dersim Genocide".[99] In Zazaki, "tertele" roughly meant "a state of inversion", also used for "massacre". The Armenian genocide was called "tertele viren" ("viren" meaning "first"), and the Dersim massacre was called "tertele peen" ("peen" meaning "last", "next" or "later").[100]

The policy of population resettlement under the 1934 Law on Resettlement was a key component of the Turkification process that began to be implemented first with the Armenian genocide in 1915 as Turkey transitioned from a pluralistic, multi-ethnic society to a "unidimensional Turkish nation-state". İsmail Beşikçi has argued that the Turkish government actions in Dersim was genocide.[101] Martin van Bruinessen has argued that the actions of the government were not genocide, under international law, because they were not aimed at the extermination of a people, but at resettlement and suppression.[102] Van Bruinessen has instead talked of an ethnocide directed against the local language and identity.[103] According to Van Bruinessen, the 1934 law created "the legal framework for a policy of ethnocide." Dersim was one of the first territories where this policy was applied.[104]

Historian Annika Thörne, in her study of historical memory in Dersim, concludes that the 1938 massacres and forced assimilation amounts to genocide.[105] According to Dilsa Deniz, convincing evidence points towards a genocide.[106]

In March 2011, a Turkish court ruled that the actions of the Turkish government in Dersim could not be considered genocide according to the law because they were not directed systematically against an ethnic group.[107]

Official and nationalist Turkish accounts have generally described the events as the suppression of a rebellion. The historian Bülent Bilmez, in a 2025 chapter of The Palgrave Handbook of Kurdish Genocides, lists four variants of this thesis: a reactionary "feudal" revolt against modernisation, a Kurdish rebellion, a Zaza rebellion against Turkification, and an Alevi (Kızılbaş) rebellion against Sunni–Hanafi policies. He rejects all four, arguing that there was local resistance to the Republic's interventions in language, religion and social structure but no organised rebellion with defined demands, and that the destruction of bridges on 21 March 1937 and later attacks on garrisons were little different from routine security incidents. He argues that, particularly in summer 1938, the events fulfil every act listed in the 1948 Genocide Convention except the prevention of births, and describes them as an attempt to eradicate a region seen as resistant to assimilation, including its people, beliefs, languages and name. He suggests the campaign's speed and violence, compared with the gradual integration of other Kurdish regions, reflected Ankara's calculation that international pressure was unlikely amid the crises of the late 1930s, and the confidence of an elite that had pursued extensive social and demographic engineering since 1924. Celal Bayar, prime minister during the 1938 operations, reportedly said that Atatürk finally ordered a strike and that Tunceli was thereby annexed to the Republic through punitive force.[108]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Keskin, Hüseyin Rodi (2025). "Language and Resistance: The Struggle of Kird/Zaza Women to Preserve Zazakî in the Kirdane and Kirmancîye Regions of Türkiye". Enacting Citizenship. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 200. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-83537-7_7. ISBN 978-3-031-83537-7.
  2. ↑ Arslan, Yusuf (2016). "Militarist Şiddetin Mağduru Olan Kadınlar: 1938 Dersim Olayları". Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi. 18 (4): 734–735. doi:10.16953/deusbed.92091.
  3. 1 2 Deniz 2020, p. 31.
  4. ↑ "Üçüncü Askeri Harekat (10-31 Ağustos 1938) | 1937-38 TERTELE – 5". Dersim TV. 12 June 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2026.; Yıldırım, Erdal (2021). Geçmişten Bugüne Alevilik Tarihi: İsyan, Direniş, Katliamlar. Babek Yayınları. ISBN 9786057010391.
  5. ↑ Kizilhan, Jan Ilhan; Noll-Hussong, Michael; Wenzel, Thomas (2022). "Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma across Three Generations of Alevi Kurds". International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 19 (1). Article 81. doi:10.3390/ijerph19010081. PMC 8751140.
  6. ↑ van Bruinessen, Martin (1994). "Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988)". In Andreopoulos, George J. (ed.). Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 141–170.; Dinç, Pınar (2025). "Dersim: A Century of State-Led Destruction and Resistance". In Dinç, Pınar; Hünler, Olga Selin (eds.). The Republic of Turkey and its Unresolved Issues: 100 Years and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 56. doi:10.1007/978-981-96-1583-4_4.
  7. ↑ "'Dersim Katliamı'ndaki o fotoğrafın sırrı ortaya çıktı". Radikal. 23 December 2014. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  8. ↑ Strass, Sabine; Akçınar, Mustafa (2017). "Dersim Across Borders: Political Transmittances Between the Kurdish-Turkish Province Tunceli and Europe". Migration and Social Remittances in a Global Europe. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 143–163. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-60126-1_7. ISBN 978-1-137-60126-1.
  9. ↑ Çelik, Filiz (1 January 2013). "Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: The Case of the Dersim Massacre 1937-38". Is This a Culture of Trauma? An Interdisciplinary Perspective: 63–75. doi:10.1163/9781848881624_008. ISBN 9781848881624.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  10. ↑
  11. ↑ Basaranlar, Burak (2 November 2022). "Pragmatic coexistence: local responses to the state intrusion in Dersim during the early Republican period of Turkey (1938–1950)". Middle Eastern Studies. 58 (6): 931–949. doi:10.1080/00263206.2022.2028623. ISSN 0026-3206. notes that "Dersim rebellion" is a label applied by some and contested by others
  12. ↑ Bilmez 2025.
  13. ↑ kahraman, sevim (3 May 2019). "Dersim Katliamı'nda kullanılan zehirli gazlar Almanya'dan alınmış- VİDEO". PİRHA (in Turkish). Retrieved 6 May 2024.
  14. ↑ Deniz 2020, p. 32.
  15. 1 2 "Pamukoğlu: Dersim'in emrini Atatürk verdi" [Pamukoğlu: Atatürk gave the order for Dersim]. Hürriyet (in Turkish). 19 August 2010. Retrieved 4 January 2026. Atatürk kendi el yazısı ve farklı askeri şekiller çizmiş, oklar çizmiş ve harekatın nasıl yapılacağını ve ortadan kaldırılacağını bizzat kendisi eli ile yazmış ve şekillendirmiştir. Harita Trabzon'dadır. [Atatürk personally marked the map with red and blue. He indicated our forces and the rebels' forces. He drew different military shapes and arrows in his own handwriting, and he personally wrote and shaped how the operation would be carried out and how [the rebellion] would be eliminated.]
  16. 1 2 "Turkey PM Erdogan apologises for 1930s Kurdish killings". BBC News. 23 November 2011. Archived from the original on 23 November 2011. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  17. ↑ Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the New Republican People’s Party in Turkey, M. Hakan Yavuz, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, 2023, pp. 67, ISBN 9783031367663.
  18. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen, "Zaza, Alevi and Dersimi as Deliberately Embraced Ethnic Identities" in '"Aslını İnkar Eden Haramzadedir!" The Debate on the Ethnic Identity of The Kurdish Alevis' in Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Anke Otter-Beaujean, Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East: Collected Papers of the International Symposium "Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Sycretistic Religious Communities in the Near East in the Past and Present" Berlin, 14-17 April 1995, BRILL, 1997, ISBN 9789004108615, p. 13.
  19. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen, "Zaza, Alevi and Dersimi as Deliberately Embraced Ethnic Identities" in '"Aslını İnkar Eden Haramzadedir!" The Debate on the Ethnic Identity of The Kurdish Alevis', p. 14.
  20. ↑ Faik Bulut, Devletin Gözüyle Türkiye'de Kürt İsyanlar (Kurdish rebellions in Turkey, from the government point of view), Yön Yayınclık, 1991, 214–215. (in Turkish)
  21. ↑ Ashly, Jaclynn (13 January 2021). "The Massacre in Dersim Still Haunts Kurds in Turkey". Fondation-Institut kurde de Paris. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  22. ↑ Kardaş, Ümit (30 May 2019). "A short history of Turkification: From Dersim to Tunceli". Ahval. Archived from the original on 28 November 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  23. ↑ Hans-Lukas, Kieser (27 July 2011). "Dersim massacre 1937–38". SciencesPo. Archived from the original on 11 November 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  24. ↑ Hassan, Mona (10 January 2017). Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-8371-4.
  25. 1 2 Soner Çağaptay (2002). "Reconfiguring the Turkish nation in the 1930s". Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8:2. 8 (2). Yale University: 67–82. doi:10.1080/13537110208428662. S2CID 143855822.
  26. 1 2 3 4 McDowall, David (2007). A Modern History of the Kurds. London: Tauris & Co.
  27. 1 2 "NTV TARİH SAYI 11 DERSİM 1937-1938 | Nadir Kitap". NadirKitap.
  28. ↑ Ziflioğlu, Vercihan (18 November 2009). "Military documents to shine light on 'Dersim massacre'". Hurriyet Daily News. Retrieved 22 September 2010.
  29. ↑ Beşikçi, Ismail. (1990) Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi (The 1935 law concerning Tunceli and the genocide of Dersim), Bonn, p.29. (in Turkish)
  30. ↑ Alevis in Europe: Voices of Migration, Culture and Identity, 2016, pp. 65, ISBN 9781317182658.
  31. ↑ Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State, 2020, pp. 376-377, ISBN 9781789204513.
  32. ↑ Melkonyan, Ruben; Ter-Matevosyan, Vahram (2020). "Stranded in geopolitics: the question of Turkish Armenians in Soviet-Turkish relations". Middle Eastern Studies. 56 (4): 627. doi:10.1080/00263206.2020.1742704.
  33. ↑ Basaranlar, Burak (2022). "Pragmatic coexistence: local responses to the state intrusion in Dersim during the early Republican period of Turkey (1938–1950)". Middle Eastern Studies. 58 (6): 931–949. doi:10.1080/00263206.2022.2028623.
  34. ↑ Hasretyan, M. A. (1995) Türkiye'de Kürt Sorunu (1918–1940), Berlin, Wêşanên, ënstîtuya Kurdî: I., p. 262
  35. ↑ Çağaptay, Soner (2002). "Reconfiguring the Turkish nation in the 1930s". Harvard. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
  36. 1 2 3 Lundgren, Asa (2007). The unwelcome neighbour: Turkey's Kurdish policy. London: Tauris & Co. p. 44.
  37. ↑ New perspectives on Turkey, Issues 1–4, Simon's Rock of Bard College, 1999 p. 15.
  38. ↑ Paul J. White, Primitive rebels or revolutionary modernizers?: the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, Zed Books, 2000, ISBN 978-1-85649-822-7, p. 80.
  39. ↑ Üngör, Umut. "Young Turk social engineering : mass violence and the nation state in eastern Turkey, 1913– 1950" (PDF). University of Amsterdam. pp. 244–247. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  40. ↑ Cemil Koçak, Umumi müfettişlikler (1927–1952), İletişim Yayınları, 2003, ISBN 978-975-05-0129-6, p. 144.
  41. ↑ "Üçüncü Umumi Müfettişliği'nin Kurulması ve III. Umumî Müfettiş Tahsin Uzer'in Bazı Önemli Faaliyetleri". Dergipark. p. 2. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  42. 1 2 Bayir, Derya (22 April 2016). Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law. Routledge. p. 139. ISBN 978-1-317-09579-8.
  43. ↑ Birinci Genel Müfettişlik Bölgesi, p. 66.
  44. ↑ Birinci Genel Müfettişlik Bölgesi, Güney Doğu, İstanbul, p. 66, 194. (in Turkish)
  45. ↑ Cumhuriyet, 26 August 1935.
  46. ↑ Erdal Aydoğan, "Üçüncü Umumi Müfettişliği'nin Kurulması ve III. Umumî Müfettiş Tahsin Uzer'in Bazı Önemli Faaliyetleri" Archived 26 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Atatürk Yolu, Ankara Üniversitesi Türk İnkılâp Tarihi Enstitüsü, Vol. 33–34, pp. 1–14.
  47. ↑ Cagaptay, Soner (2 May 2006). Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?. Routledge. pp. 108–110. ISBN 978-1-134-17448-5.
  48. 1 2 3 4 Turkyilmaz, Zeynep (2016). "Maternal Colonialism and Turkish Woman's Burden in Dersim: Educating the "Mountain Flowers" of Dersim". Journal of Women's History. 28 (3): 166–167. doi:10.1353/jowh.2016.0029. ISSN 1527-2036. S2CID 151865028 – via Project MUSE.
  49. ↑ Hasretyan, M. A. (1995) Türkiye'de Kürt Sorunu (1918–1940), Berlin, Wêşanên, ënstîtuya Kurdî: I., p. 262. (in Turkish)
  50. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 68–71.
  51. ↑ Jwaideh, Wadie (2006). The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development. Syracuse University Press. p. 215.
  52. 1 2 Faik Bulut, ibid, p. 221. (in Turkish)
  53. ↑ Chaliand, Gerard (1993). A People without a country: the Kurds and Kurdistan. London: Olive Branch Press. pp. 58. ISBN 9780940793927.
  54. ↑ Bilmez 2025, p. 72.
  55. 1 2 Bilmez 2025, pp. 72–75.
  56. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 72–76.
  57. ↑ "List of Former Ministers of Foreign Affairs". www.mfa.gov.tr. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
  58. ↑ Van Bruinessen, Martin (1994). Andreopoulos, George J. (ed.). Conceptual and historical dimensions of genocide. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 141–170.
  59. ↑ Cumhuriyet, 18 November 1937, 17 Kasım 1937: Atatürk'ün Diyarbakır'dan Elâzığ'a gelişi, Tunceli'nin Pertek kazasına geçerek Murat Nehri üzerinde Singeç Köprüsü'nü hizmete açışı. (in Turkish)
  60. ↑ "Atatürk Pertek'te" Archived 2010-07-27 at the Wayback Machine, The government of Pertek District. (in Turkish)
  61. ↑ Kezer, Zeynep (2014). "Spatializing Difference: The Making of an Internal Border in Early Republican Elazığ, Turkey". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 73 (4): 523. doi:10.1525/jsah.2014.73.4.507. ISSN 0037-9808. JSTOR 10.1525/jsah.2014.73.4.507.
  62. ↑ Bilmez 2025, p. 76.
  63. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 72, 77.
  64. 1 2 3 4 Bilmez 2025, pp. 77–78.
  65. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 72, 78–79.
  66. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 73–76.
  67. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen, Kurdish ethno-nationalism versus nation-building states: collected articles, Isis Press, 2000, ISBN 978-975-428-177-4, p. 116.
  68. 1 2 Bilmez 2025, p. 77.
  69. 1 2 "Dersim harekâtları sırasında Almanya'dan kimyasal savaş maddesi alımıyla ilgili yeni belgeler ortaya çıktı" [New documents emerge on the purchase of chemical warfare agents from Germany during the Dersim operations]. Serbestiyet (in Turkish). 28 August 2026. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  70. ↑ Deniz 2025, pp. 290–291.
  71. ↑ "Çağlayangil: Ordu Dersim Kürtlerini kesti, fare gibi zehirledi!" [Çağlayangil: The army slaughtered Dersim's Kurds, poisoned them like rats]. T24 (in Turkish). 19 November 2011. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  72. ↑ Muhsin Batur, Anılar, Görüşler, Üç Dönemin Perde Arsası, Milliyet Yayınları, 1985, p. 25. (in Turkish)
  73. ↑ "Resmi raporlarda Dersim katliamı: 13 bin kişi öldürüldü", Radikal, 19 November 2009. (in Turkish)
  74. ↑ "The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) Page 4" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  75. ↑ Gerlach, Christian (2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press. p. 401. ISBN 978-0-521-88078-7. But by far the bloodiest violence targeted Kurds during the Dersim uprising of 1937–38, when Turkish troops massacred about 30,000 people.
  76. ↑ Hüseyin Aygün, Dersim 1938 ve zorunlu iskân: telgraflar, dilekçeler, mektuplar, Dipnot Yayınları, 2009, ISBN 978-975-9051-75-4, p. .[citation needed]
  77. ↑ "Kieser 2011">Kieser, Hans-Lukas (27 July 2011). "Dersim Massacre, 1937–1938". Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. Sciences Po. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  78. ↑ White, Paul J. (October 2000). Primitive Rebels Or Revolutionary Modernizers: The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey. Zed Books. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-85649-822-7.
  79. 1 2 Deniz 2025, p. 288.
  80. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 77–79.
  81. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 65–68, 76, 78, 81.
  82. ↑ Hans-Lukas Kieser: Some Remarks on Alevi Responses to the Missionaries in Eastern Anatolia (19th–20th cc.). Archived 12 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine In: Altruism and Imperialism. The Western Religious and Cultural Missionary Enterprise in the Middle East. Middle East Institute Conference: Bellagio Italien, August 2000
  83. ↑ Yeğen, Mesut (2020). "State Violence in 'Kurdistan'". Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books. pp. 303–346 [310]. doi:10.1515/9781789204513-012. ISBN 978-1-78920-451-3.
  84. ↑ Deniz 2020, p. 28.
  85. ↑ Kaynak, Genelkurmay Belgeleri II, 203, 205.
  86. ↑ Jandarma Üst Komutanligi JUK Report, 13-17.
  87. ↑ Hüseyin Aygün, Dersim 38 Resmiyet ve Hakikat (Ankara: Dipnot, 2010), 99.
  88. ↑ Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 300-301.
  89. ↑ "1938 Dersim: Bir belge de Nazımiye Nüfus Müdürlüğü'nden!". Baskın Oran (in Turkish). 28 August 2014. Retrieved 6 May 2024.
  90. ↑ Aslan, Genel Nüfus Sayımı Verilerine, 404.
  91. ↑ Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim, 64; Ağar, Tunceli-Dersim Coğrafyası, 18.
  92. ↑ Kieser, Hans-Lukas (19 January 2016). "Dersim Massacre, 1937-1938". Sciences Po. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
  93. ↑ Törne, Annika (5 November 2019). Dersim – Geographie der Erinnerungen: Eine Untersuchung von Narrativen über Verfolgung und Gewalt [Dersim – Geography of Memories: An Investigation of Narratives of Persecution and Violence] (in German). De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110630213. ISBN 978-3-11-063021-3.
  94. ↑ Astourian, Stephan; Kévorkian, Raymond (eds.). "Physical and Epistemic Violence against Alevis in Modern Turkey". Collective and State Violence in Turkey: Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books.
  95. ↑ Orhan, Gozde (2020). "Remembering a Massacre: How Did the Rise of Oral History as a Methodology Improve Dersim Studies?". Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej: 95–118. doi:10.26774/wrhm.249. S2CID 226660222.
  96. ↑ Selcan Hacaoglu (23 November 2011). "Turkish PM apologizes over 1930s killings of Kurds". News.yahoo.com. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  97. ↑ Arin, Kubilay Yado. Turkey and the Kurds – From War to Reconciliation? UC Berkeley Center for Right Wing Studies Working Paper Series. 26 March 2015.
  98. ↑ "Turkey apologises for 1930s killing of thousands of Kurds". The Daily Telegraph. 24 November 2011. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  99. ↑ Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds, Cengiz Çandar, 2020, pp. 56, ISBN 9781498587518.
  100. ↑ The Republic of Turkey and Its Unresolved Issues: 100 Years and Beyond, 2025, pp. 54, ISBN 9789819615834.
  101. ↑ İsmail, Beşikçi (2013). Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim jenosidi. İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı Yayınları. ISBN 9786058693395.
  102. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen: Genocide in Kurdistan? 1994, S. 141–170.
  103. ↑ The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) Archived 2016-01-08 at the Wayback Machine Excerpts from: Martin van Bruinessen, "Genocide in Kurdistan? The suppression of the Dersim rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the chemical war against the Iraqi Kurds (1988)", in: George J. Andreopoulos (ed), Conceptual and historical dimensions of genocide. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 141–170.
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  105. ↑ Törne, Annika (5 November 2019), "Dersim – Geographie der Erinnerungen: Eine Untersuchung von Narrativen über Verfolgung und Gewalt", Dersim – Geographie der Erinnerungen (in German), De Gruyter, p. 81, doi:10.1515/9783110630213, ISBN 978-3-11-063021-3, retrieved 11 May 2024
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  107. ↑ Saymaz, Ismail (14 March 2011). "Turkish prosecutor refuses to hear Dersim 'genocide' claim". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  108. ↑ Bilmez 2025, pp. 11, 67–68, 71–72, 80–81.

Sources

Further reading

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