largest demonstration against dams in Turkish history: 20,000 people were received in October 2009 in Dersim on the road Photo: Free Munzur initiative |
from the Mesopotamian plain, the journey takes just behind the stifling provincial town of Elazig on the Keban Reservoir. A kind of rocky cone stands in the middle of the water, a former, now the island has become a mountain peak, crowned by the castle Pertek. The ferry on which we will pass the peculiar structure transported, in addition to coaches and military trucks from the German factory, where artillery guns are connected.
On the other side of the convoy is made of two tanks at a checkpoint of the Jandarma, military police, as. Here, where the hills adjacent to the pent-up waters of the Euphrates, begins Dersim - "The" terrorists area, say the soldiers. Bullet holes in road signs and slogans of the Kurdish Workers Party PKK and the Maoists on the steep rock walls are beside the road that there is rebel country - and very concrete: With roadblocks demonstrated guerrilla organizations in recent months, their right to an "autonomous Kurdistan" .
means on any map
Dersim in the Kurdish-language Zazaki Silver Gates. But this name is found today on any Turkish map. Mid-thirties, was in the foothills of the northern province Osttaurus located between Anatolia and Ararat Highlands, Upper Mesopotamia and renamed the mountains of the Black Sea by the Turkish government in Tunceli. Which means "copper fist" - the fist of the state, which is still against the rebellious inhabitants of the province with its high mountains up to 3300 meters will be curved.
Even in the Ottoman Empire Dersim had maintained its autonomy. The residents led almost from taxes to the State, is denied the military, fought in the Crimean War or even during the First World War and the subsequent War of Independence. The majority of the Kurds in neighboring provinces, the extermination of the Zazaki and differ in their Alevi faith, Islam, nature and ancient Near Eastern religious elements into a humanistic influenced teaching connects. With Shia Muslims share the Alevis, the veneration of Ali, the son of the prophet Mohamed. However the Alevis pray for men and women together, alcohol is permitted, and religious ceremonies are not practiced in mosques, but at home or in so-called Cem houses. This has contributed to the Alevis today some bloody persecution by orthodox Muslims.
mid-1930s was Dersim free as a "last stronghold" of the Kurds. In inaccessible mountain heights, the small villages in the control of the state were largely removed. Leader Mustafa Kemal called "Ataturk," therefore called absolute authority for his government, "so that this inner wound, this repulsive cancer removed at any cost and can extinguish." Due to a late 1935 adopted Tunceli-law of a state of siege was imposed on the province. Against her by the military governor Abdullah Alpdoan required disarmament, some rebels fought in June 1937 with an attack on police - marks the start of the popular resistance. He joined under the leadership of Alevi clergy Seyid Riza soon up to 80,000 peasant guerrillas to defend their autonomy.
Ataturk's daughter
as public enemy of executed leader of the Dersim Rebellion in 1937: larger than life statue of Seyid Riza Photo: Nick Braun |
decided in a secret meeting of the government operation "punishment and deportation", "If one is content with only one offensive action will continue the resistance herd. For this reason, it is considered necessary, those who have used and use weapons, make the spot permanently harm their Villages to completely destroy and carry away her family. "At the wheel of one of the planes that dropped 50-pound bombs on farming villages, was the first Turkish pilot, Sabiha Gokcen. According to the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal, which was "due to such acts to the symbol of" modern Turkish woman, now an Istanbul airport is named.
Dersim The green valleys filled with poison gas. Women and children who had taken refuge in mountain caves were walled up alive. Others threw themselves from the rocks in the Munzur river to escape being raped. Seyid Riza was taken by treason and executed in November 1937. Disunity of the tribal leaders and the depletion of the guerrillas could break down the resistance in the fall of 1938. Wide extermination of more than 50,000 were killed, tens of thousands of survivors were deported to western Turkey to the "assimilation". In the collective historical memory of the inhabitants of the years 1937/38 were as Tertel (destruction), whose recognition as a genocide has been called recently in November 2010 on a conference organized extermination of refugees in the Berlin House of Representatives. A second wave of destruction
found itself exposed Dersim in the 90s when the military could evacuate 210 villages in the war against the PKK guerrillas and put the province under an embargo. To date, the sets Army to "scorched earth". In summer, set fire to soldiers on large forest areas and poisoned fields with white phosphorus. Large areas have been declared military security zones, so that the cattle could not be carried to the high pastures and cattle farmers lost their livelihoods. Because of flight, expulsion and emigration, the population has halved Dersim within the past 30 years to about 90,000 people almost. is
In the capital
The provincial capital city of Tunceli in a valley on either side of the Munzur River. It is located in a permanent state of siege. On the surrounding mountain ridges light at night the headlights of the military post. Into the narrow valleys to avoid falling into an ambush, the army has begun to use helicopter gunships in particular. They usually start from the middle of the city located in barracks. Armoured vehicles drive by the minute on the main road, machine guns aimed at passersby. The nervousness is the soldier should be noted. Not without reason: After mid-October, four fighters were killed by the PKK commandos on a mountain top in Ovacik, the guerrillas attacked a few days later at the police headquarters in retaliation for the city of Tunceli and shot several members of a special unit. After the firefight, in which even a PKK guerrilla fighter, died surrounded Armored car and shot the city aimlessly around.
stands opposite the town hall a woman statue. Officially it is dedicated to human rights. But for the extermination of this is a monument to the PKK fighter Zilan who blew himself up at this place in 1996 amid a military parade in the air. Another memorial was dedicated in September above the Munzur. Larger than life proclaims Seyid Riza, who as public enemy executed leaders of the rebellion of 1937, by the indomitable spirit of resistance of the population.
The Mayor
sunk in the water of the Euphrates: Castle in Pertek Keban Reservoir Photo: Nick Braun |
Left and socialist parties have traditionally has a strong following in Dersim. So the party is for peace and democracy (BDP) with Edibe Sahin the Mayor of Tunceli city. Its predecessor, the unionist Songül Erol Abdil of the now banned Party for a Democratic Society (DTP), 2004 was the first woman in the highest office in a provincial capital in the History of Turkey was elected. Abdil and arrested in April 2009, Vice Mayor Alican Önlü are currently competing with 150 other defendants because of their local government involvement in court in Diyarbakir. PKK is accused of supporting them.
to the left of the city government initiated social projects to prevent further migration of the population, is a woman bakery cafe, which offers several dozen women an independent employment.
are striking in the city's many bars. "Usually, trying to ban the governors appointed by the government, alcohol. But in Dersim, the people of the state really encouraged to drink, "lamented the president of the province of BDP, Amber Bakiray. In some pubs are also tolerated by the state prostitution and drug trade operated so as to degrade the moral resistance of the population, as is suspected. PKK fighters committed in the summer as a warning and outside the opening times several attacks on nightclubs.
political language
understands Because of decades of government policy of assimilation is now a significant part of the people of Dersim not as Kurds, but as Alevis. A growing number also refers to himself as Zaza. The issue of Zazaki is a Kurdish dialect has long been a political issue beyond the linguistic research. The Turkish government took the early 1990s, when they even the existence of the Kurdish nor denied the view that trade is a separate language. The BDP is made specifically for a promotion of only one of a minority actively spoken Zazaki. At the same time she sees in Zaza nationalism targeted cleavage maneuvers of the state against the Kurdish movement.
"Who does not know its origin, is the manipulation of the state helpless," warns the co-chairman of the BDP-City Association of Dersim, Özgür Söylemez. Has actually going back to Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Republican People's Party (CHP) in the name of Kemalism, despite the massacres of Alevis a strong backing in Dersim. Many Alevis see the secular-oriented parties a protection against further Islamization. For mass resignations from the CHP in Dersim provided, however, in November 2009, the Deputy Chairman Onur Oymen, as he praised during a parliamentary debate on the army's actions in 1937/38 Dersim as a "fight against terrorism."
came to a taboo as it once that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan open in his reply of "Dersim massacre" and said, turned to rename the province in Dersim in view. Saw it the end of 2009 look as if the CHP had lost their last bastion in the Kurdish areas, they could make up ground, when in May 2010, the native of Dersim Alevi Klçdarolu Kemal became party chairman: His family had been involved in the uprising 1937th "He's good for Dersim, because he's one of us," says the old Dede, a priest with a bushy mustache Alevi, we meet at the sources of Munzur in Ovacik. Although "Gandhi Kemal," as the supposedly ascetic living Klçdarolu is called, has no job other than the demand for solutions to the Kurdish question, Dede advertises the CHP.
Several mayors have now spilled into the CHP returned. And the constitutional referendum on 12 September 2010 Dersim was before the secular strongholds on the Aegean coast, the province with the highest percentage of no votes against the notion of Islamic government, to submit to the judicial organs. "Until now, the military control of the province. Now the state wants Dersim under the control of the CHP set, "speculates one of the directly elected BDP MPs Seraffetin Halis.
old plans
Immediately behind Tunceli city since 2009, extends the Uzuncayir reservoir. Some roofs protrude out of the water of this pent-up to 15 kilometers Munzur. A total of 20 dams and Hydropower plants will be built in the province. Energy is of secondary importance. "The whole geography of Dersim is to be changed," the BDP-Chairwoman Söylemez said during a trip through the spectacular gorges of the existing since 1971 Munzur National Park. Its unique flora and fauna are threatening to go down as well as many of the Alevis sacred places along this 144 km long tributary of the Euphrates River in the flood. "The aim is to cut off the guerrillas, the pathways and have to drive more people," so Söylemez.
plans to go back to 1930 when the then Chief of General Staff Fevzi Cakmak suggested that the valleys of the rebellious province to flood. Söylemez rechnet damit, daß Zehntausende Menschen ihre Heimat verlassen würden, wenn es zum Bau der Dämme käme. Moreover, such a return of the 90 years would be impossible in the people displaced from their villages. The provincial capital was cut off from other places. Environmentalists fear a regional climate change and - as in the case of the Keban dam - caused thereby, deforestation of the river valleys.
The dam projects have been decided by the state without consulting the local municipalities. In October 2009, were received by the largest demonstration against the Turkish dams History of 20,000 people in Dersim on the road. And in September 2010, an agent working under the protection of the military at a dam construction site surveying party near Tunceli city had hundreds angry residents to safety. Finally, the Supreme Court revoked the end of October, the permits for the construction of the planned 111 meters high Konaktepe Dam and a hydroelectric power station, through which the Munzur was dammed above the provincial capital.
Yildirim hope
The chairman of the local human rights association, Baris Yildirim had sued because the destruction of national parks in the awarding of the building permit was not taken into account was. "The court decision has clarified the legal status of national parks. Consequently, this ruling should "be regarded as a precedent, the Attorney Yildirim. But the state Public Works DSI is likely to object, and the government change the laws accordingly. "The Munzur to flow freely" - under this slogan, the resistance continued against the destruction of Dersim.
