Dersim Rebellion
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Dersim Rebellion is the rebellion of Seyid Riza of Kizilbash elites who was chief of the Abbasuşağı tribe against Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
DO NOT BELIEVE THIS, IT IS WRITTEN BY TURKS
IT IS NOT A REBELLION
IT IS A GENOCIDE
TURKS ARE DENYING THIS WAS A GENOCIDE JUST LIKE THEY DENY ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
During the Ottoman period, the authorities had been unable to make the Dersimlis pay taxes or recognise any authority other than their own. This situation continued in the early years of the Republic of Turkey. This situation had a lengthy background dated back to 1926. In an Interior Ministry report in 1926, it was considered necessary to use force against Dersimlis [1]. On November 1st, 1936, during a speech in parliament Atatürk acknowledged Dersim as Turkey's most important interior problem [2].
A letter sent by Dersim's tribal chiefs to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations in November 1937 details what it claimed were measures taken by Turkish authorities to: deprive Kurdish children even of a basic education in Turkish language schools; to prevent Kurds becoming officers in the Turkish army or becoming employed in civil posts in the Kurdish region; to eliminate all references to Kurd or Kurdistan from scientific works; to force Kurds into slave labour in construction projects; to deport and disperse another part of the Kurds; to uproot young Kurdish women and girls from their families and place them in illegal concubinage and, finally, to Turkify a part of the Kurdish nation and to exterminate the other part, through different means [3].
[edit] Active stage
Local intellectual cadres also played a role in the rising's leadership, according to one source[citation needed].
The rebellion was led by the local traditional Kizilbash elites, at the head of whom stood Seyid Riza, chief of the Abbasuşağı tribe. It was at the Kizilbash heartland of Dersim, which was itself part of a region marked for total evacuation by Ankara [4].
The 1937-38 Dersim uprising can be seen as actually two separate uprisings, separated by a particularly hard winter. The first went from late March 1937 to November 1937, while the second war began in April 1938 and lasted until December 1938.
Turkey mobilized 50,000 troops to suppress the rebellion. Since Dersim region was closer to Ankara than the previous rebellious regions, Turkish Air Force was used more effectively against the uprising. Sabiha Gökçen, Turkey's first female pilot and the adopted daughter of Atatürk, took part in the bombing raids against the Dersim Kurds [5] Finally, a top secret 4 May 1938 decision of the Turkish Cabinet resolved that Turkish military forces which had previously been massed in the area would attack Nazimiye, Keçigezek Sin and Karaoglan very strongly, and "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" [6].
Seyid Riza was himself captured on 5 September 1937 and was hanged, together with ten of his lieutenants, on 18 November. Immediately before his death, Seyid Riza made a speech, in Zazaki (Dimli): I am 75 years old, I am becoming a martyr for my own people. Down with the fickle and liars! (Dersimi, 1988: 299-303). Then, defiant to the end, Seyid Riza put the noose on his own neck, pushed the executioner out of the way and executed himself.
[edit] Aftermath
This was the most devastating political defeat until that point for the Turkish Kurmancî Kurds - as well as for the ethnically different Zazas and Kizilbash. The resistance movement of the latter was shattered for the next three decades. Retribution by Turkish forces claimed at least 40,000 Dersimlis, who were deported and massacred following this defeat [7][8]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Beşikçi, I. (1991) Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi, Bonn, Weşanên Rewşen, p.29
- ^ Hasretyan, M. A. (1995) Türkiye'de Kürt Sorunu (1918-1940), Berlin, Wêşanên, ënstîtuya Kurdî: I.,p.262
- ^ Dersimi, M. Nuri (1988) Dersim Tarihi, Komkar Yayinlari, Köln. pp.299-303
- ^ Kendal, in Chaliand, Gerard (1980) People Without a Country. London & New Jersey, Zed Press, p.67
- ^ Olson, R., The Kurdish Rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925), Mt. Ararat (1930), and Dersim (1937-8): Their Impact on the Development of the Turkish Air Force and on Kurdish and Turkish Nationalism, Die Welt des Islam, New Ser., Vol.40, Issue 1, March 2000, pp.89-90
- ^ Türkiye Cumhuriyetinde Ayaklanmalar,p.491
- ^ Kinnane, Derk (1964) The Kurds and Kurdistan, London, Oxford University Press, p.31
- ^ Pelletiere, Stephen C. (1984) The Kurds. An Unstable Element in the Gulf, Boulder, Westview PressPelletiere,p. 83
