ANKARA, TURKEY
HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) Dersim MP, Alican Önlü, asked Tayyip Erdoğan about the genocide that was committed 83 years ago in Dersim: “Will you establish a truth commission in order to recognise what was initiated on May 4 as a massacre, and accept the day as the day of memorial?”
The member of parliement proposed the parliamentary question regarding the Dersim genocide that was committed in 1937-1938, killing 70 thousand people.
The statement includes the following notes: “The people of Dersim describe the incidents in 37-38 as ‘Tertele’ (‘Massacre’). Tertele means a major destruction and extintion. This major massacre which is remembered as ‘Roza Şaye (‘Dark Day’) is recorded in the Turkish history as the biggest massacre after Armenien Genocide. And this massacre stands still in the middle of the Turksih history as a shame.
Dersim was a town, where the people built self-governance and the societies there maintained their existence without any state-hegemonic power as such. Therefore, they constituted a major threat for the denialist-assimilative state, which constitutes itself on the identities of Turkishness and Sunni Islam.
Dersim, which was planned to be destroyed in the times of Ottoman, because they were evaluated apart from the Islamic religious community was also seen as an obstacle against the nationalization during the transformation from Ottoman rule to the Republic.”
