The Dersim massacre – then and now (part I): Was it genocide?

Excerpt

“Fifteen years ago, we couldn’t say many things with certainty, now we can. It was not only about the destruction of one’s own Dersim culture, but also about the destruction of human lives. It was the intention to kill many Kurds. It is also striking that some Turkish dignitaries who played a key role in the mass killings in Dersim were involved in the Armenian Genocide in 1915,” he said.

Quotes

• "Fifteen years ago, we couldn't say many things with certainty, now we can. It was not only about the destruction of one's own Dersim culture, but also about the destruction of human lives. It was the intention to kill many Kurds. It is also striking that some Turkish dignitaries who played a key role in the mass killings in Dersim were involved in the Armenian Genocide in 1915,"

  — Uğur Ümit Üngör

Highlights

• On June 17, 1925, the government established the "Commission for Reform of the East" (Şark Islahat Encümeni). This committee came up with a lengthy report, which among other things proposed that a permanent state of emergency be declared in eastern Turkey. That would make the implementation of Turkification easier.

• "Kaya proposed a two-stage plan: in the first year of a future campaign, the aforementioned problems would be violently overcome. In the following years, education and deportations could then complete the Turkification process." At the end of 1935, the "Tunceli Act" went into effect. Dersim would henceforth be called Tunceli.

• "The operation, called ‘punishment and deportation’ (tedip ve tenkil), started in the summer of 1937 and intensified in July and August of the same year,” Üngör said.

• "Actually, the Turkish operation consisted of two phases, that of 1937, which was mainly military, and that of 1938, which was mainly genocidal in nature," Çelik said.

• Ügör said that a large number of villages were attacked, people were gathered and shot or burned alive, and women and children were not spared. He estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 Kurds were murdered in Dersim in 1937-1938. Van Bruinessen has the same estimate.

• "Children from Dersim who survived the slaughter were raised as Turks and as Sunni and in the Turkish language, with the aim of extinguishing their former identity," he said.

• The Turkish government believed in one people, one language, one religion: their new Turkey was ethnically Turkish, linguistically Turkish, and the faith was Sunni Islam. This ideology was spread from the centre to the periphery. Everywhere CHP party buildings were erected, the new message was proclaimed.

Sources