Zaza Genocide

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Sorry I know I am posting alot today

Has anyone heard about the Genocide of the Zaza people who were killed along with Armenians in Turkey during 1938 (Ataturk time to Inonu time?)

http://www.zazaki.de/englisch/index.htm

[ardakilic]

It should be Dersim Massacres.

Thousands of Zaza people massacred, their villages burnt, and also chemical weapons used. Another information: M. Kemal's daughter-in-law Sabiha Gokcen (which an airport name in Istanbul now) bombed villages with her airplane.

[ardakilic]

If you can read Turkish

http://www.dersim.biz/

[ardakilic]

TURKEY IS GUILTY OF THE GENOCIDE COMMITED İN DERSIM IN 1938

In order to create a Turkish nation from above, Turkish nationalists waged a bloody campaign against non-Turkish and non-Muslim elements of the empire.
The First World War served as an excuse for the Young Turks, the then Turkish goverment, to exterminate Armenians. It was a deliberate and sustain war, in the course of which hundreds of thousands Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks had been ruthlessly killed or forced into exile.
The collapse of the Ottomans had left a power vacuum, filled by another section of the Turkish nationalists, called Kemalists at a later time.
In 1937-38, i.e., at a time when world attention was focused on the Second World War, the Turkish nationalists commited another genocide. This time the victims were Dersimis, who are also known as Kızılbash or Alevis. Approximately 40.000-70.000 of them were killed and thousands were taken into exile. The Dersim Genocide of 1937-1938 was on one hand a continuation of the Kızılbash extermination of the Ottoman times and also an extermination of an ethnically distinct and separate people from Turks.
What happened back then has been handed down to the later generations by their parents and grand-parents, who witnessed the onslaught, and of whom some are still alive.
Furthermore the sites of the mass graves all over Dersim are well known and can easily be located if and when need be. The ruins of the country`s cultural heritage including churches belonged to the nations`s Christian section are still visible.
People wish to see the justice served. A search for justice has already began. A legal action against Turkey will at long last be taken at some time in the future.

SEYFI CENGIZ

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Thanks for the post Arda!

[bell-the-cat]

Sorry I know I am posting alot today

Has anyone heard about the Genocide of the Zaza people who were killed along with Armenians in Turkey during 1938 (Ataturk time to Inonu time?)

http://www.zazaki.de/englisch/index.htm

And a sort of second genocide is going on, without actual killing, by Kurds who claim that the Dersimli are actually Kurds.

A few years ago I went into Dersim, to the Munzur valley, to try and find what was in 1915 the last operating Armenian church in Dersim. There was nothing left of it. According to some locals, it had been destroyed by the Turkish army in 1938, during the rebellion. Then in the 1950s a small village grew up on the site. It in turn was destroyed in the 1990s, again by the Turkish army.

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Thanks for your reply Bell.

Was their any excuse for their attack on the village, or didn't they even bother this time?

[ardakilic]

To the bell:

You are right, some Kurds (especially PKK-oriented sources) claim that Dersimi people are Kurds and Turkish state claims its ordinary arguments. And these people are torn between. Actually Dersimi people see themselves as a distinct ethnicity and culture and they are mainly Alevi Zaza. Their names comes from the Dersim area, with Persian suffix -i, meaning "belongs to" (like Dersim-ian). It is claimed that Dersim name comes from Persian, der (door) and sim (silver). It is logical because there was silver mine in there and neighbouring city Gumushane ("House of Silver"). But the region is also named similar words like Derhini or something like that in ancient Greek time.

To Pedro:

Every time they have an excuse bro. Dersim region is known with its autonomy till the time of Ottomans. Region is highland and mainly dwelled by unsettled tribes. New Turkish Republic see the "question" as hot patato and for instance General Fevzi Cakmak defines the solution as "considering region as a colonial land".

The main aim of Republic is to deport the Dersimi people to Western cities to make them Turk and assimilate. Dersimi tribes resisted this decision but nothing like firefight till a Turkish army oficcer raped a young Dersimi girl. After that, in the command of Martyr Seyyid Riza, rebellion exploded. Kemal's "Erase Dersim from the map" order was recorded.

Fight continued between 1938-1940. When the "qeustion is solved", approximately 60 000 were killed, a culture is collapsed and survivors were exiled.

Responsibles of the Dersim Genocide, as far as i can extract:
- M. Kemal
- Fevzi Cakmak
- Ismet Inonu
- Celal Bayar
- Abdullah Alpdogan

[ardakilic]

And the last word of Martyr Seyyid Riza, when he was walking to the gallows tree, without any shaking, he turned his head to the space:

"Evlad-ı Kerbelayık, bihatayık, ayıptır, zulümdür. Kahrolsun kahpe yalancılar"

(We are sons of Kerbala and innocent. It is shame, it is cruelty. Hell for fickle liars!".

He kicked the gallows by himself.

Chief Constable Şükrü Sökmensuer tells that, when Seyyid Riza said his words by shouting, "earth and skies shakened" and "everybody got goose bumps".

[bell-the-cat]

Thanks for your reply Bell.

Was their any excuse for their attack on the village, or didn't they even bother this time?

It was one of thousands of villages in eastern Turkey that were depopulated and destroyed during the 1990s as part of the Turkish army's campaign against the PKK. There would not necessarily have had to have been a specific incident in that v illage that prompted the destruction. The whole area was closed to foreigners at that time.

There is a modern bridge in the valley below the church site - bridges in Turkey all have unique names, sometimes just the name of the river and a number, this one is called the "Kilise" (church).

The church was called Halvori Vank, or Surp Garapet monastery.