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Dersim massacre
Turkish military operations, 1937–1938
The Dersim massacre,[2][3] also known as Dersim genocide,[4][5][6][7][8] was carried out by the Turkish military over the course of three operations in the Dersim Province (renamed Tunceli) against Kurdish Alevi rebels and civilians in 1937 and 1938. Although most Kurds in Dersim remained in their home villages,[9] thousands were killed and many others were expelled to other parts of Turkey.[10] Twenty tons of “Chloracetophenon, Iperit and so on” were ordered and used in the massacre.[11][12][13]
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."[14]
^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. ISBN9781848881624.
^Ayata, Bilgin; Hakyemez, Serra (2013). "The AKP's engagement with Turkey's past crimes: an analysis of PM Erdoğan's "Dersim apology"". Dialectical Anthropology. 37 (1): 131–143. doi:10.1007/s10624-013-9304-3. ISSN1573-0786. S2CID144503079.
^Ilengiz, Çiçek (2019). "Erecting a Statue in the Land of the Fallen: Gendered Dynamics of the Making of Tunceli and Commemorating Seyyid Rıza in Dersim". L'Homme. 30 (2): 75–92. doi:10.14220/lhom.2019.30.2.75. S2CID213908434.
^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. ISSN0026-3206. notes that "Dersim rebellion" is a label applied by some and contested by others
^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, ISBN9789004108615, p. 13.
^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.