By Shakhawan Shorash:

Dersim 1937 – victims of Turkish brutal repression

There are many accounts of mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against defenseless minorities committed by state authorities and military forces in the multiethnic states in the twentieth century. Long term ethnic tensions and conflicts during the colonial period and after the end of colonialism continued in many countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Sudan, Rwanda, Nigeria, Indonesia, Cambodia etc. These resulted in mass killings and destruction campaigns committed by the states at different times. Ethnic conflict and the factors behind the conflict make the risk of mass killings and genocide higher and more possible in multiethnic states. Ethnic conflict factors have the ability to promote a genocidal mentality and can result in the crime of genocide when extreme leaders and ideologies take political and military power.

The tension between the oppressed Kurds and the Turks goes back to the nineteen century under the Ottoman Empire and continued after the birth of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. In Turkey, close to the end of the Ottoman Empire, there were many internal, negative factors at play, including legitimacy problems, weak national identity, internal security concerns, demographic changes and bias, the dominance of an ethnic mosaic and multiethnicity inside the country, border problems, discrimination, marginalization, historical injustice, exclusionary ideas and leaders, secession trends, and external concerns. In response to these internal problems, which weakened the Ottoman Empire, some radical nationalist groups emerged. The extant negative factors created a suitable ground for the rise of Turkish radical nationalism, which developed and progressed quickly and created the right circumstances for the elevation of a rigid and intolerant mindset toward non-Turkish minorities. The nationalist political organization Itihad u Teraqi (Committee of Union and Progress) and young Turkish officers and the thinkers, such as Ziya Gokalp the author of The Principles of Turkism, influenced the Turkish society. The nationalist trend focused on the creation of a strong Turkish national state based on Turkish identity.

The extreme nationalist movement, which focused on Turkishness, laid the groundwork for the promotion of genocidal factors, such as dehumanization of the unwanted ethnic groups and rationalization of the ethno-nationalist genocidal aims. Non-Turkish ethnic groups rejected the rigid Turkish nationalist mentality and continued to support the plurality and multiethnicity of the society. However, according to Turkish nationalism, those ethnic groups could not fit into a national Turkish state, as they constituted a serious problem for Turkish national identity and were a real threat to Turkish unity and sovereignty. Therefore, they were unwanted, and Turkish nationalism legitimized the ultimate solution—the cleansing of Turkish society of the impure ethnic elements via expulsion, assimilation, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. The unwanted ethnic groups were the Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds, Qizikbash, and other small ethnic groups.

When the radical nationalist group took control and had authority over the military power and resources, the realization of ethnic cleansing and genocidal aims became likely. This nationalist government of The Young Turks, wiped the Armenians out in an organized and systematic destruction campaign in 1915. Nevertheless, the genocide of the Armenians was not the last destruction campaign committed by Turkish ethno-nationalist leaders. In fact, Turkish nationalists cleansed the country of non-Muslim ethnic groups of Greeks, Assyrians, Qzilbash (Shia-Muslims), and Ezidi Kurds.

In 1923 Mustafa Kamal, the founder of the new Turkey, took power as the first Turkish president of the Republic of Turkey. He too was an extreme nationalist, inspired by the Young Turks and nationalist thinkers. Like the other nationalist officers, he believed in a pure Turkish ethnic state. He and three other officers established the political organization called Motherland and Freedom in 1905, and, in 1908, he was among the first members of the nationalist organization of Itihad u Teraqi. Thus, the extreme nationalist wave continued its power after the birth of the new Turkey.

Turkish leaders had another policy concerning the Kurds in general and the Alevi Kurds of Dersim in particular. Turkish leaders, especially Mustafa Kamal, used the loyal Kurds in the independence wars against the Greeks and the Armenians in exchange for political rights (Beshikchi, p. 3). Mustafa Kamal was aware of Kurdish separatist tendencies and this policy aimed at weakening the Kurdish resistance. Mustafa Kamal stressed Kurdish-Turkish unity and regarded the Kurds as brothers and the Turks and Kurds as an undivided people. In September 1919, he stated: “Turks and Kurds will continue to live together as brothers around the institution of khilafa, and an unshakable iron tower will be raised against internal and external enemies.” When the Ankara authority under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal became stronger in 1921, he removed the Kurds in his statement:

Source: kurdistantribune