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Anasayfa |
Confronting the 1938 Dersim massacre
Orhan kemal cengiz /sundays zaman/26 july 2011
When I see some of our politicians arguing and quarreling, I cannot help
but think about American wrestling. You should know it; the wrestling
games where huge guys wrestle with their opponents on stage.
You might think that a real fight is happening but nothing ever happens
to the wrestlers because it is of course a fake struggle. It is a show
put on for children and for those who still feel like a child. Just as
the wrestlers, the Turkish politicians also engage in fake struggles.
One of their scraps is all about facing the past.
A brutal massacre was committed in Dersim, Turkey in 1938. Even though
history refers to the massacre as a campaign of slaughter targeting the
Kurds and the Alevis, it is really about the 1915 massacres. Dersim was
one of the areas where the Armenians fleeing the 1915 massacre took
refuge. The Dersim massacre is not the first or the last bloodshed in
the history of Turkey. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition
Republican Peoples' Party (CHP), is from Dersim. In an effort to push
Kılıçdaroğlu into the corner, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan makes
frequent references to the Dersim massacre.
Just like American wrestlers, Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu stage a fake
fight over the Dersim massacre. Erdoğan invites Kılıçdaroğlu to face up
to history, whereas Kılıçdaroğlu makes a call for Erdoğan to open the
archives. In reality, nobody wants to do anything. The political
struggle is an imagined wrestling game staged before the Turkish people
who have remained childlike because of their failure to face up the
past. What we are seeing is a show. Erdoğan does not intend to reveal
the truth; he is aware of the historical chains bound to his political
rival's feet and he is challenging him; that's all.
Kılıçdaroğlu, born in Dersim, is of course aware of the meaning of
Dersim and of what happened there in 1938. However, he is also aware
that facing up to the past and the truth would force him to analyze and
question the roots of his party as well, given that the orders for
bombing Dersim were given by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the CHP.
Erdoğan's eagerness to deal with the past is limited to the CHP's
history. He does not want to know or see that the Dersim massacre took
place in 1938 because of the mentality of the people who committed the
1915 massacres. Otherwise, confrontation with the 1938 would be easier
since its history goes back to 1915.
This is ho the days bearing importance for them and that in this
calendar, Dersim was said to have taken place in 1939. This pathetic
effort to present the massacre as something that took place after the
demise of Atatürk (November 1938) makes me sad.
The situation of our conservatives who, by supporting the Ergenekon
investigation, believe that they are confronting the past is no
different. The motion filed by CHP members in the assembly of the
İstanbul Municipality requesting that Ergenekon Street be changed to
Hrant Dink Street did not go through because the Justice and Development
Party (AKP) voted against it. So positions can change when roles are
different. We have a serious problem with confrontation. We are unable
to face our truth and past. We cannot properly appreciate our
victimization, our brutality; thank God, we have begun talking about the
Armenian issue over the last 5-6 years. The Ergenekon case has shed some
light on Turkey's dark near past. But the ways in which the issue is
being dealt with is still superficial. We are trying to understand the
past from a limited perspective and by blaming the others. For instance,
the Alevis fail to see the role of the state in the massacres they have
been subjected to, whereas the Sunnis seek to put the whole blame on the
state to stop their suffering. Reality is painful and we are not mature
enough to confront it.
What we call confrontation is not something that we could do by relying
on superficial reasoning. We could deal with the past by opening up our
hearts to the stories of others, feeling the pain and agony of these
stories and witnessing the destruction of what we thought was true.
Hrant Dink tried to do this, but was murdered because he invited us to
confront our past. Dink has always been a target, but whenever he
attempted to speak about the Armenian tragedy connected to the story of
an orphan girl, the Dersim massacre and the linkage between the two, he
became a number one target. Dink claimed Sabiha Gökçen (adopted by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) who bombed Dersim was an Armenian orphan. With
this statement, he touched upon our hearts; he reached out to the
deepest depths of our minds. Try to feel what it is like being an
Armenian orphan who dropped bombs on Dersim. When I think about it, I
suddenly recall the final remarks by Sayyid Reza during his execution in
Dersim:
“We are descendants of Kerbela. We are innocent. It is a dishonor. A
cruelty. A murder; this is exactly what the Dersim massacre is.”w the
political leaders act. Is the case any different for their supporters?
Do you think that the conservatives, the Alevis and the concerned
moderns are at all confronting anything? I heard from a friend of mine
that the Alevis had printed a calendar marking
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Dersim
Soykırımının Askeri ve Siyasi Mimarları
Mustafa Kemal: ''‘
sorumluluğu üzerime alıyorum, vuracağız Dersim’i ''.
İsmet İnönü :
''Dersim'i her türlü askeri
hareketlerle temizledik’’ .
Mahmut Celal Bayar: ''Dersim'i vurduk''
Abdullah Alpdoğan: ''İtaat
edin''
 İhsan
Sabri Çağlayangil::''Mağaralara
iltica etmişlerdi. Ordu zehirli gaz kullandı. Mağaraların kapısının içinden.
Bunları fare gibi zehirledi. Yediden yetmişe o Dersim Kürtlerini kestiler.
Kanlı bir hareket oldu. Dersim davası da bitti''.
Sabiha Gökçen (M.Kemal'in manevi kızı, Dersim'i bombalamakla
görevlendirilen ilk kadın pilot):
''Bombamın
hedefleri benim gözümde insan değildir. Müteharrik bir takım hedeflerdir.
Amirlerim bombayı atmakta vatani bir lüzum gördükten sonra bende askerce
itaatten ve verilen vazifeyi tesirli ve iyi bir surette yapmaktan başka bir
düşünce olmaz.“
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