The Postmodern Dersim Operation

      The Postmodern Dersim Operation, which took years of preparation, was launched in November 2011 following an intense media bombardment. It is clear that the operation's planners considered the finest details of this long-term campaign and did not neglect logistics or the rear front, just as they did not neglect the front lines.

    The call made by CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in 2010 for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to open the Dersim archives will be remembered. Last month, the Prime Minister apologized on behalf of the state for the Dersim Operation and released some documents.

The Dersim dispute quickly ceased to be a political polemic between Kılıçdaroğlu and Erdoğan and completely divided society in two. We can easily say that the Dersim debate will proceed beyond the initiative limits of both leaders in the future, and that those who opened Pandora's box in the hope of political gain will never be able to close it again.

      Before we move on to the background of bringing Dersim to the agenda and the dimensions of the bill that will be charged to today's Turkey over Dersim, let's take a short tour of history:

Turkey in the 1930s had tasted the victory of the War of Independence and had largely completed its establishment. A national state model based on a national economy was adopted. An independent, non-aligned, and peaceful foreign policy was being pursued. A total education mobilization was launched alongside an ambitious development drive. Ankara was determined to make its administrative and legal authority valid throughout the country. It was desired that the consciousness of citizenship replace tribal and sectarian affiliation.

       Having suppressed the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925 and the Ararat rebellion in 1930, the Republic could not tolerate local power centers that would oppose Ankara's authority. For this reason, the Republic's intervention in Dersim, which was sociologically living in the feudal era and politically did not accept Ankara's control, was inevitable. The primary advantage of Dersim, which had lived as a kind of confederation of tribes since the Ottoman era, was its nature. This rugged geography, which wrapped around Dersim like armor, had not given way to the Ottomans. Despite various military operations and countless admonitions, the Ottomans could not impose their rule on Dersim.

        The memoirs of a captain who participated in the Dersim Operation conducted under the command of Neşet Pasha on the eve of the 1908 Second Constitutional Era contain interesting information about the sociological structure of the region at the beginning of the last century. In the memoirs dating back 30 years before the 1937-1938 Dersim operation, Seyyid Rıza, who was considered the most influential tribal leader and almost the ruler of the region, is mentioned. A suppression operation was organized by the Sultan's order following tribal raids and looting in surrounding provinces. The young captain writes that the operation, carried out with 1 division of soldiers consisting of 13 infantry battalions, 3 mountain batteries, and the Hamidiye Cavalry Regiment, half of which were redifs (reservists), was unsuccessful. (Brigadier General Ziya Yergök - From Harbiye to Dersim, Remzi Kitabevi)

      After the liquidation of the multi-national, multi-religious, and multi-legal Ottoman Empire, it was impossible for Dersim to continue as a parallel state in the Republican era as it had in the Ottoman era. The young Republic first tried the method of persuasion. The feudal caste, which did not want to lose its privileges, was unwilling to accept Ankara's authority. After this stage, the clash between the Republic and feudalism, and between democracy and tribal hierarchy, became inevitable.

      What happened in 1937-1938 was the liquidation of a tribal structure that resisted the regime and responded with arms, by using force. The Republic had to use force to break the resistance of the medieval-legacy feudal caste against the regime. After suppressing the regional resistance, the Republic implemented exile for the leaders of the feudal hierarchy to neutralize the sociological basis of possible future uprisings.

      The suffering experienced in 1937-1938, the family tragedies passed down from generation to generation, and the emotional stories of migration are undoubtedly very important. The suffering of the people in the surrounding provinces, who lived by agriculture and animal husbandry, were outside the collective discipline of feudalism, and had been freed from the tribal caste, due to Dersim's looting raids, is another dimension of the matter.

      The liquidation of feudalism and the confederation of feudal lords with the entry of Republican authority and Republican institutions into Dersim should be evaluated as a progressive step from a historical perspective. Dialectically, it is the turning of the wheel of history forward. When looking at the issue from a Marxist perspective, it is necessary to eliminate local feudal resistances against the central state's revolutionary breakthroughs aimed at catching up with the modern world.

     What is strange is that this process, which is the Republic's liquidation of an outdated structure, is being turned upside down by some circles who define themselves as revolutionary and socialist. It is the characterization of the Republican administration as genocidal and murderous by such people, and the exoneration of the leaders of the feudal uprising as the oppressed of the regime.

We are not unaware of the difficulty of explaining to both the government and the opposition that reading history in reverse, not learning from history, putting subjective fiction before historical reality, and turning the Republic's nation-building project upside down will serve no purpose. But there seems to be no other option than to hold the objective mirror of history up to the faces of those who make history turn a somersault.

December 11, 2011