Tunceli Province

Tunceli Province
Province of Turkey
Location of Tunceli Province in Turkey
Country	Turkey
Region	Central East Anatolia
Subregion	Malatya
Largest City	Tunceli
Foundation	25 December 1935
Government
• Electoral district	Tunceli
• Governor	Mehmet Ali Özkan
Area
• Total	7,774 km2 (3,002 sq mi)
Population  (2018)[1]
• Total	88,198
• Density	11/km2 (29/sq mi)
Area code	0428[2]
Vehicle registration	62

Tunceli Province (Turkish: Tunceli ili,^[3] Kurdish: Parêzgeha Dêrsimê,^[4] Zazaki: Dêsim wilayet; Armenian: Դերսիմի մարզ, romanized: Dersimi marz) is a province in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. It was named Dersim Province before being named Tunceli Province. It is the least densely-populated province in Turkey. It has a population of 83,645 people.^[5] Tunceli Province has 8 districts: Çemişgezek, Hozat, Mazgirt, Nazımiye, Ovacık, Pertek, Pülümür, and Tunceli (the capital district).

Before the Armenian genocide, Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharput) vilayet (province), was one of the six vilayets which was a part of historical Turkish Armenia.^[6][7] Tunceli Province was part of Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharput) vilayet.^[8] It has a Zaza Alevi majority.^[9][10]

The districts of Mazgirt, Nazımiye and Çemişgezek had a large Armenian population during the Ottoman period. A large part of this population must have been deported out of Anatolia with the deportation order of 1915. It is likely that the remaining population migrated to Western Anatolia.^[11] The province is mostly populated by Zazas.

The history of the province stretches back to antiquity. It was mentioned as Daranalis by Ptolemy, and seemingly, it was referred to as Daranis before him. One theory as to the origin of the name associates with Darius the Great. Another, more likely hypothesis, considering the region's Armenian background, says the name Daranalis or Daranaghis comes from the historical Armenian province of Daron, of which Dersim belonged.

The area that would become Dersim province formed part of Urartu, Media, the Achaemenid Empire, and the Ancient kingdom of Armenia. Later ruled by the Roman and Parthian Empires and by their successors, the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. Seljuq Turks invaded in the 11th.^[12]

As of the end of the 19th century, the region, called Dersim, was included in the Ottoman sancak (sub-province) of Hozat, including the city and the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet (now Elazığ), with the exception of the actual district of Pülümür, which was in the neighboring sancak of Erzincan, then a part of the Erzurum Vilayet. This status continued through the first years of the Republic of Turkey, until 1936 when the name of the province ("Dersim") was changed to Tunceli, literally 'the land of bronze' in Turkish (tunç meaning 'bronze' and el (in this context) meaning 'land') after the brutal events of the Dersim rebellion. The town of Kalan was made the capital and the district of Pülümür was included in the new province.^[source?]

In 1937, an Alevi Kurdish revolt broke out in the region and was suppressed with the deaths of 30,000 Kurds.^[13]

Following the Tunceli Law 1935, which demanded a more powerful government in the region, the Fourth Inspectorate-General (Umumi Müfettişlik, UM) was created in January 1936.^[14] The fourth UM span over the provinces of Elaziğ, Erzincan, Bingöl and Tunceli,^[15] and was governed by a Governor Commander. Most of the employees in the municipality were to be filled with military personnel and the Governor-Commander had the authority to evacuate whole villages and resettle them in other parts.^[15] Also the juridical guarantees did not comply with the law in the other parts in Turkey. The trials were at most 15 days long and sentences could not be appealed. For a release, the Governor Commander had to give his consent. The application of the death penalty was under the authority of the Governor-Commander, while normally it would be the authority of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to approve such a punishment.^[15] In 1946 the Tunceli Law was abolished and the state of emergency removed but the authority of the fourth UM was transferred to the military.^[15] The Inspectorates-General was dissolved in 1952 during the Government of the Democrat Party.^[16]

Tunceli's language distribution is 69.5% Zaza, 29.8% Turkish and 0.74% Kurdish in 1927.^[11] Zaza is spoken in Hozat, Pülümür, Ovacık and Nazımiye. Both Kurdish and Zaza is spoken in Tunceli town and Mazgirt.

According to Mihran Prgiç Gültekin, the head of the Union of Dersim Armenians, around 5% of the population in villages of Dersim are "converted Armenians."^[17][18] The greater part of hidden Armenians of Dersim, according Gultekin, is afraid that the nationalist regime may be back and may repress them. Currently over 200 families have announce their Armenian descent in Dersim, Gultekin said.^[19] In April 2013, Aram Ateşyan, the acting Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, stated maybe that 5% of Tunceli (Dersim)'s population is of Armenian origin.^[20] In 2015, a group of citizens in Dersim (Tunceli) established the Dersim Armenians and Alevis Friendship Association (DERADOST). The opening ceremony of the association was attended by Hüseyin Tunç, then Deputy Mayor of Tunceli, Yusuf Cengiz, President of Tunceli Chamber of Commerce and Industry, representatives of non-governmental organisations and some citizens.^[21][22] On the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, president of the association Serkan Sariataş said that the state should face its past history as soon as possible.^[23] Through the 20th century, many Armenians lived in the mountainous region of Dersim. During the Armenian genocide, many of the Armenians in the region were saved by their Kurdish neighbors.

Population by year (1914: Ottoman Empire; 1940–today: Turkey)

Maçoğlu, who entered the election as the candidate of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), was elected mayor of Tunceli (Dersim) with 32 per cent of the votes.^[24][25][26] Thus, for the first time in the history of Turkey, communists began to govern the municipality of a province.^[24]

According to Nuri Dersimi, it is noteworthy that six centuries before Christ, Greek historians and geographers called the Dersim region Daranis, and in the Bisltun inscriptions of Dara, this region is called Zuza, and the term Zuza is similar to the word Zaza, which is the "Kurdish dialect" spoken in Dersim and its region.^[27] According to another thesis, estimated that the name Dersim (Der-sîm "silver gate" in Persian) was given to the region, which frequently changed hands between the Sassanids and Byzantium during the Byzantine period.^[28] After and before the Dersim rebellion, any villages and towns deemed to have non-Turkish names were renamed and given Turkish names in order to suppress any non-Turkish heritage.^[29][30][31] During the Turkish Republican era, the words Kurdistan and Kurds were banned. The Turkish government had disguised the presence of the Kurds statistically by categorizing them as "Mountain Turks".^[32][33]

The people of Tunceli have been actively fighting to get their province reverted to its old Kurdish name "Dersim". Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) claimed they are working on what it called a “democratization package” that includes the restoration of the Kurdish name of the eastern province of Tunceli back to Dersim in early 2013, but there has been no updates or news of it since then.^[34] The local authority decided to call it Dersim in May 2019, while the Governor said it was against the law to call it Dersim.^[35]

• John I Tzimiskes (925–976)^[36] - Byzantine emperor between 969 and 976 years
• Seyid Riza (1863–1937) - Kurdish tribal leader and organizator of Dersim rebellion
• Nuri Dersimi (1893–1973) - Kurdish nationalist writer, revolutionary and intellectual
• Aurora Mardiganian (1901–1994) - Armenian author, actress, and a survivor of the Armenian genocide
• Turgut Özal (1927–1993)^[37][38] - 8th president of Turkey, he was of mixed Turkish and Kurdish descent
• Sait Kırmızıtoprak (1935–1971) - Kurdish nationalist writer and revolutionary
• Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (1948) - Turkish economist, retired civil servant, social democratic politician and leader of the Republican People's Party
• Gültan Kışanak (1961)^[39] - Kurdish journalist, author and politician
• Alican Önlü (1967) - Kurdish politician
• Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius (1977) - Dutch politician of Zaza origin, current minister of justice and security in Netherlands
• Sakine Cansız (1958–2013) - Kurdish activist, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
• Volga Sorgu (1981) - Zaza movie and serial actor
• Zuhal Demir (1980)^[40] - Belgian lawyer and politician of Kurdish origin, current minister of environment, justice, tourism and energy in Flanders, Belgium
• Edibe Şahin (1960) - Kurdish politician, former mayor of the municipality of Tunceli.
• Kamer Genç (1940–2016) - Turkish politician
• Hülya Oran (1978) - Kurdish miliant, one of leaders of Kurdistan Workers' Party and is the co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union
• Hozan Diyar (1966) - Kurdish singer
• Yıldız Tilbe^[41] (1966) - singer of Kurdish origin
• Hüseyin Aygün (1970) - Zaza lawyer and politician
• Ali Haydar Kaytan (1952–2019) - Kurdish miliant, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
• Aynur Doğan (1975) - Zaza singer and songwriter
• Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu (1968) - ^[42] communist politician, currently the mayor of Tunceli with Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) ticket
• Ferhat Tunç (1964) - Kurdish^[43] singer, songwriter and musician
• Mikail Aslan (1972) - Zaza musician

• Watts, Nicole F. (2010). Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey (Studies in Modernity and National Identity). Seattle: University of Washington Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-295-99050-7. The overwhelming majority of voters supporting pro-Kurdish candidates came from thirteen provinces: Ağri, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Tunceli, Van, Batman, Șırnak, and Igdır. In all these provinces the population is at least 50 percent Kurdish, and in all these provinces support for the parties was at least 20 percent in 2002.
• Bois, Th; Minorsky, V.; MacKenzie, D. N. (2002) [1960]. "Kurds, Kurdistān". Encyclopaedia of Islam (2 ed.). BRILL. ISBN 9789004161214. Turkish Kurdistān numbers at least 17 of them almost totally: in the north-east, the provinces of Erzincan, Erzurum and Kars; in the centre, going from west to east and from north to south, the provinces of Malatya, Tunceli, Elazığ, Bingöl, Muş, Karaköse (Ağrı), then Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Siirt, Bitlis and Van; Finally, the southern provinces of Şanlıurfa (Urfa), Mardin and Çölamerik (Hakkarî).
• Gültekin, Ahmet Kerim (2019), Kurdish Alevism: Creating New Ways of Practicing the Religion (PDF), University of Leipzig, p. 4, Tunceli, a small, Kurdish-Alevi-dominated province in Eastern Turkey, has played an important role in the revival of Kurdish Alevism.
• Nalbandian, Louise (1969). The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties through the Nineteenth Century. University of California Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-520-30385-0. The largest number of Armenians lived in Turkey and were concentrated in the six vilayets (provinces) of Turkish Armenia: Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Diarbekiar, Sivas, and Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharput).
• Hovannisian, Richard G. (2003). "Bitter-Sweet Memories: The Last Generation. of Ottoman Armenians". In Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.). Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide. Taylor & Francis. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-7658-0519-5. To the east of these regions lay the six vilayets of "Turkish Armenia," that is, Sivas (Sebastia), Kharput (Kharpert) or Mamuret ul-Aziz, Erzerum (Karin), Bitlis (Baghesh), Diarbekir (Tigranakert), and Van.
• Nişanyan, Sevan (2011). "Hayali Coğrafyalar: Cumhuriyet Döneminde Türkiye'de Değiştirilen Yeradları". TESEV Demokratikleşme Programı (PDF) (in Turkish): 14. Türkiye'de "Türkçe olmayan" yeradlarının Türkçeleştirilmesine yönelik siyasi irade 1913-1916 yıllarında Enver Paşa'nın bayraktarlığında ortaya çıktı. Balkan Savaşları'nı izleyen günlerde İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti'nin, Milli Mücadele esnasında da Müdafaayı Hukuk kadrolarının girişimiyle Rumca veya Bulgarca kökenli olan birçok yeradi değiştirildi. [...] Radikal dönüşüm 1950'lerin ikinci yarısında başladı. Bu tarihten itibaren Türkçeleştirme adeta siyasi iktidarlanı aşan bir "devlet politikası" olarak benimsendi. 1957'de "Türkçe olmayan" yeradlarını belirlemek ve yeni adlar önermek amacıyla, İçişleri Bakanlığı bünyesinde, silahlı kuvvetlerin, üniversitelerin ve diğer Atatürkçü devlet kurumlarının katıldığı Yabancı Adları Değiştirme Komisyonu kuruldu. İl İdaresi Kanunu'nda 1959'da yapılan bir değişiklikle İçişleri Bakanlığı'na köy adı değiştirme yetkisi verildi. Aynı yıl iller bazında yeni yeradı listeleri yayımlanmaya başlandı. Hazırlıklar 27 Mayıs 1960 darbesinin hemen ertesinde semeresini verdi. Darbeyi izleyen dort ay içinde 10.000'e yakın yeni köy adı resmi kullanıma sokuldu. 1965'ten önce Turkiye'deki tüm yeradlanının yaklaşık uçte biri değiştirildi. Bazıları binlerce yıllık tarihe sahip olan 12.000 dolayında köy ve 4.000 dolayında bağlı yerleşim ile binlerce akarsu, dağ ve coğrafi şekil, bürokratik zihniyetin ürünü olan yeni Türkçe adlara kavuştu.
• Tuncel, Harun (2000). "Türkiye'de İsmi Değiştirilen Köyler English: Renamed Villages in Turkey". Fırat University Journal of Social Science (in Turkish). 10 (2): 1. Türkiye'deki köy adlarını, Türkçe olanlar ve olmayanlar şeklinde iki gruba ayırmak mümkündür. Bu isimlerin önemli bir kısmı 1940 yılından günümüze geçen süreçte değiştirilmiş, yeni isimler verilmiştir. Bu değiştirme işlemleri hem Türkçe köy adlarında hem de Türkçe olmayanlarda yapılmıştır.
• Hooglund, Eric (1996). "The Society and It's Environment". In Metz, Helen Chapin (ed.). Turkey: a Country Study. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print Office. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-8444-0864-4. During the 1930s and 1940s, the government had disguised the presence of the Kurds statistically by categorizing them as "Mountain Turks." With official encouragement, some scholars even suggested that Kurdish, an Indo-European language closely related to Persian, was a dialect of Turkish.
• Bartkus, Viva Ona (1999). The Dynamic of Secession. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 91. ISBN 978-0-521-65970-3. Perhaps most critically, until 1991, Turkey even denied all existence of the Kurdish population by referring to them as "mountain Turks." Yet names, language, and traditions are perceived to retain power as weapons.
• Dersimi, Nuri (1952). Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim (in Turkish). Aleppo: Ani Matbaası. p. 1. ISBN 975-6876-44-1. Milattan altı asır önce, Yunan tarih ve coğrafiyacılarının Dersim havalisine Daranis adını verdikleri malûm olduğu gibi, Dara'nın Bisltun kitabelerinde bu havaliye Zuza adı verilmiş olması ve Zuza tabirinin Dersim ve havalisinde konuşulan kürtçe lehçeye alem olan Zaza kelimesine benzemesi dikkati çeker.
• Sertel, Savaş (2016). "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin İlk Genel Nüfus Sayımına Göre Dersim Bölgesinde Demografik Yapı". Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (in Turkish). 24 (1): 8. doi:10.18069/fusbed.82073. Bu duruma göre nüfusun % 69.5'i Kürtçe ve Zazaca, % 29.8'i Türkçe, % 0.74'ü Ermenice konuşmaktadır. Anadili Kürtçe ve Türkçe olan kadın sayısı erkek sayısından fazladır. Ermenice konuşan kadın ve erkek sayısı ise eşittir. Bu dönemde bölgede Ermenice konuşan 556 kişi vardır. Oysa bu rakamın çok daha fazla olması gerekir. Çünkü Mazgirt, Nazımiye ve Çemişgezek ilçelerinde Osmanlı döneminde yoğun Ermeni nüfusu bulunmaktaydı. Bu nüfusun büyük bir kısmı 1915 yılındaki tehcir kararıyla Anadolu dışına sürülmüş olmalıdır. Kalanların da Batı Anadolu'ya göç etmiş olması muhtemeldir.
• Tuncel, Metin (2012). "Tunceli". TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (in Turkish). Vol. 41. pp. 380–381. Bizans devrinde Sâsânîler ile Bizans arasında sık sık el değiştiren yöreye Dersim (Farsça Der-sîm "gümüş kapı") adının bu dönemde verildiği tahmin edilmektedir.
• Fleet, Kate; Kunt, I. Metin; Kasaba, Reşat; Faroqhi, Suraiya (2008). The Cambridge History of Turkey. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62096-3.
• Bayir, Derya (2016). Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-09579-8.
• Cagaptay, Soner (2 May 2006). Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-17448-5.
• Gerlach, Christian (2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press. p. 401. ISBN 978-0-521-88078-7. But by far the bloodiest violence targeted Kurds during the Dersim uprising of 1937–38, when Turkish troops massacred about 30,000 people.