Dersim 1937 ,“State Terrorism”: A dark episode in Turkish history ...
Dersim 1937-“State Terrorism”: Daily Radikal has published various documents and photos showing that Atatürk ordered and oversaw the whole “operation.” Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1) A dark episode in Turkish history These days, the Turkish media is full of discussions about “what really happened” in Dersim in 1937 – an eastern province in which a “rebellion” was brutally crushed . The victims, whose numbers exceed 10,000 and included many women and children, are remembered with grief. Now Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the ever-venerated and never-questioned “father of all Turks,” is getting the questioning he deserves for the first time. Dersim, a tribal province of Alevi Kurds, was a “lawless” region even under the Ottomans, who did not interfere in the affairs of the local communities unless they created big problems for the center. The Turkish Republic that was founded in 1923, however, had its own version of the “mission civilisatrice,” or the self-declared right to