BEHDİNAN, SOUTHERN KURDISTAN
KCK made a written statement commemorating Seyit Riza on the 82nd anniversary of his execution.
“82 years ago Pir Seyit Rıza, his son and many tribal leaders were executed. We commemorate Pir Seyit Rıza and the leading Dersim elders, and reiterate their promise that we will realize their aspirations for free life with their own identities, cultures and beliefs.”
The only wish of Seyit Rıza and all the people of Dersim, including the 37 executed on November 15, 1937, was to live free on their land with their own identities, languages and beliefs. However, as revealed in the Orient Reform Plan and Dersim reports, the Kurdish identity in Dersim was wanted to be destroyed and Turkified. Dersim and the whole of Kurdistan were intended to become the sphere of expansion of the Turkish nationalization. Because the Dersim people did not accept these impositions, the Turkish state carried out the genocide attack. Ten thousand of people were killed, tens of thousands of the language, cultures and beliefs were banished in the provinces. The rest were subjected to white genocide, that is, cultural genocide, using difficult, oppression and all state facilities. Turkish state officials said that they had done all this to bring civilization to Dersim. Dersim, which has experienced the most human, social, natural and democratic features of Middle East and Kurdistan as culture and belief, has been subjected to genocide with unprecedented barbarity. Genocide has been practiced literally in Dersim.
The Dersim genocide has taken its place in history with the practices where the anti-Kurdish hostility had been at its peak. Private and psychological warfare against the Kurds of Dersim was achieved by genocide from all dimesnions.
During this process, Pir Seyit Rıza spoke the following influential words: “I couldn’t cope with your games, this has troubled me. But I didn’t submit to you, and let this trouble you.”
Seyit Rıza’s stance has an important place in the awareness of the Kurdish people. The Turkish state has shown very strikingly what the depth of reality is in this sense. He stated that no words of the Turkish state should be believed, and that all of it’s policies and discourses were meant to conceal the genocide.
Seyit Rıza’s grandchildren and the entire Kurdish people did not submit to any pressure, threats of oppression, dungeons and massacres by taking Seyit Rıza’s stance as an example, they said: “will not submit.” Seyit Rıza and Sheikh Sait, who do not compromise their stance even on the stand of death, will continue to insist on living with the love of the country, language and culture until Kurdistan reaches a free and democratic status.
The Turkish state, which aims to eliminate Kurdishness through massacres and exiles and white genocide in Dersim, has still not abandoned this aim. The mindset that wanted to crush the Kurdish people’s struggle by naming them bandits yesterday, states “we are fighting against terrorism” today.
It wants to complete the genocide by putting all kinds of difficult devices and political genocides to use.
The mindset which maintains itself through committing genocides is overflowing the bordersof Turkey. He practiced genocide policies with similar attacks and practices in Bakurê (Northern) Kurdistan, Rojava (Western) Kurdistan, Başurê (Southern) Kurdistan and Şengal.
Like the Hüseyin Cevahirs, A. Haydar Yildizes, Mazlum Dogans, Sakine Cansizes, Kazim Kulus, Dr. Barans, Süleyman Cihans, Cafer Camgözes and Atakan Mahirs who did not turn away from the inheritance left by Pir Seyit Rıza. They did not bend, they resisted, revealing the identity of Dersim and the fact that all Kurdish people and freedom fighters will resist the genocidal forces until they create Free Kurdistan and Free Dersim.
With the stance and spirit of Seyit Riza and the derivation of his executed friends, we approach a place after 82 years of sacrificial spirit; risking any price against the genocide committers to defeat the ultimate defeat, for a free Kurdistan, democratic Turkey and democratic Middle East. ”
