The Dersim massacre, also known as the Dersim genocide, 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, thousands were killed and many others were expelled to other parts of Turkey. Twenty tons of "Chloracetophenon, Iperit and so on" were ordered and used in the massacre. According to Turkish Army general Osman Pamukoğlu in the 1990s, the Dersim massacre was carried on the operational order of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
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.
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. 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 and land reform, and staged armed revolts that were put down by the Turkish military.
Dersim had been a particularly difficult province for the Ottoman government to control, with 11 different armed rebellions between 1876 and 1923. 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, which favoured land reform and direct control over the country's farmlands, as well as state planning for agricultural production. In an Interior Ministry report in 1926, it was considered necessary to use force against the aghas of Dersim. 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.
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. 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. The 1927 Turkish census had recorded 556 Armenian-speakers living there. On 1 November 1936, during a speech in parliament, Atatürk described Dersim as Turkey's most important interior problem.
Resettlement Law
The Turkification process began with the 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law. 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. This area had a reputation for being rebellious, having been the scene of eleven separate periods of armed conflict over the previous 40 years.
"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 on 4 January 1936.
Fourth General Inspectorate
In order to consolidate its authority in the process of Turkification and Islamitization of religious and ethnic minorities, the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed Law No. 1164 on 25 June 1927 which allowed the state to establish Inspectorates-General. Following the First Inspectorate-General (1 January 1928, Diyarbakır Province), the Second Inspectorate-General (19 February 1934, Edirne Province) and the Third Inspectorate-General (25 August 1935, Erzurum Province), 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. 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. 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. In those schools, they were to be Turkified and following their graduation, married off to each other. 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. In September 1937, the Elazig Girls' Institute in which the aim was to raise Turkish women out of Kurdish girls was established in Elazıg.
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.
Legal and military preparation
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.
The rebellion
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.
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.
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.
Turkish military operations
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. The rebels continued to resist until they ran out of ammunition, in late 1938, by which time the region was devastated.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ihsan Sabri Çağlayangil, who would later become foreign minister, arranged the trials and hanging of the leaders of the rebellion and some of their sons.
They were: