Dersim rebellion

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=Dersim Rebellion


caption=
date=March 1937 - November 1937, April 1938 - December 1938
place=Tunceli Province
result=Rebel leaders were captured.
combatant1=Republic of Turkey
combatant2=Seyid Riza
commander1=
commander2=
strength1=
strength2=
casualties1=
casualties2=|

Dersim Rebellion is the rebellion lead by Seyid Riza of Kizilbash Zaza elites, who was chief of the Abbasuşağı tribe against Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Background

During the Ottoman period, the authorities had been unable to make the Dersimlis pay taxes or recognise any authority other than their own. This situation continued in the early years of the Turkish Republic founded by Atatürk. In an Interior Ministry report in 1926, it was considered necessary to use force against Dersimlis. [Beşikçi, I. (1991) Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi, Bonn, Weşanên Rewşen, p.29] On November 1st, 1936, during a speech in parliament Atatürk acknowledged "Dersim" as Turkey's most important internal problem. [Hasretyan, M. A. (1995) Türkiye'de Kürt Sorunu (1918-1940), Berlin, Wêşanên, ënstîtuya Kurdî: I.,p.262]

The 1937-38 Dersim uprising can be seen as actually two separate uprisings, separated by a particularly hard winter. The first war went from late March 1937 to November 1937, while the second war began in April 1938 and lasted until December 1938. The Dersim rebellion was led by the local traditional Kizilbash elites, at the head of whom stood "Seyt Riza", chief of the Abbasushagi tribe. Local intellectual cadres also played a role in the rising's leadership, according to one source.Fact|date=July 2008

Kurdish Grievances

A letter sent by Dersim's tribal chiefs to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations in November 1937 details what it claimed were measures taken by Turkish authorities to: deprive Kurdish children even of a basic education in Turkish language schools; to prevent Kurds becoming officers in the Turkish army or becoming employed in civil posts in the Kurdish region; to eliminate all references to Kurd or Kurdistan from scientific works; to force Kurds into slave labour in construction projects; to deport and disperse another part of the Kurds; to uproot young Kurdish women and girls from their families and place them in illegal concubinage and, finally, to Turkify a part of the Kurdish nation and to exterminate the other part, through different means. [Dersimi, M. Nuri (1988) Dersim Tarihi, Komkar Yayinlari, Köln. pp.299-303] [cite book |isbn=0812216164 |chapterurl=http://www.let.uu.nl/~Martin.vanBruinessen/personal/publications/Dersim_rebellion.pdf |title=Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide |chapter=Genocide in Kurdistan? The suppression of the Dersim rebellion in Turkey (1937-38) and the chemical war against the Iraqi Kurds (1988) |first=Martin |last=van Bruinessen |authorlink=Martin van Bruinessen |editor=George J. Andreopoulos (ed.) |publisher= University of Pennsylvania Press |year=1994 |pages=pp. 141-170]

References