on those who were involved with the organization, under pressure from Turkey. The French authorities took further measures to remove the Khoybun chiefs from the Kurdish regions of Syria. The brothers Jaladat and Kamuran Bedirkhan were forbidden from entering the regions east of the river Euphrates. Even during times of high Franco-Turkish tension, France always sided with Ankara, to the detriment of the Kurdish nationalists, wrote Jordi Tejel.26 With the passage of time and the diminishing value of the “Kurdish card” against Turkey, the French-Kurdish collaboration, limited as it was, ended in 1936, the year of the signing of the treaty between France and Syria, which foreshadowed the French military withdrawal from the territories of Syria and the country’s independence. A year later, in 1937, a French-Turkish rapprochement was underway, signaled by relinquishing to Turkey the Sanjak of Alexandretta (İskenderun in Turkish, then called the Province of Hatay), which was ultimately given in 1939. Utilization of the Kurds against Turkey was no longer an item on the French agenda.
Despite the perception of the Turks, and the expectation of the Kurds, the foreign support from the Big Powers once again did not materialize, just like in the case of the Sheikh Said rebellion. Besides, the activities of the rebels were restrained to the extent that Kurds started perceiving their abstinence as a betrayal. Kurdish sentimentalism aside, the imperatives of realpolitik never worked in the Kurds’ favor in the 1920s and 1930s, similar to what would be witnessed half a century later.
Dersim: The Alevi–Zaza’s Turn and the Massacre
Following the suppression of the Ararat revolt, it was Dersim’s turn. An area with stiff, majestic mountains, Dersim was the exclusive home to Alevi–Zaza Kurds and Armenians before 1915, and had traditionally enjoyed virtual autonomy for centuries, mainly due its topography. The new highly centralized Kemalist state, an intrinsically Turkish Sunni edifice, would not permit the survival of such a de facto autonomous entity in a rebellious Kurdish region, as demonstrated by revolts of different magnitudes and responses by the state since the foundation of the Republic. The first Kurdish revolt, coming before the foundation of the Republic, was an Alevi uprising known as the Koçgiri revolt of 1921, in a region adjacent to Dersim that some historians and geographers considered the Koçgiri region belonging to the Greater Dersim area. The Society for Rise of Kurdistan (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti), the first Kurdish nationalist organization, was formed in İstanbul in 1918 with the aim of establishing an independent Kurdistan. Involving a number of high-level Ottoman officials of Kurdish origin, the Society planned the Koçgiri revolt, which it took three months for the state to crush. The revolt was suppressed so brutally that the commander in charge of the repression was eventually dismissed by the Grand National Assembly and called back to Ankara. McDowell describes the revolt in these terms:
In May 1932, Dersim had attracted government attention. Dersim was notoriously defiant. No fewer than eleven military expeditions had tried to quell its inhabitants since 1876. From 1930 onwards, the government began a policy of deportation, disarmament and forced settlement of nomadic tribes in a manner which resembles the operations against Armenians in 1915 to achieve greater control of Dersim. At first, it was piecemeal, but it was clear that the suppression of all Dersim was only a matter of time.27
Tackling Dersim was a prerequisite of the government’s articulate “Reform Plan for the East” (Şark Islahat Planı), which combined administrative reorganization, including demographic changes, with military repression. In 1935, Dersim was made a province and named Tunceli, literally meaning “the Bronze Hand,” connoting the iron fist of the Turkish government and military. A stage of siege was declared in 1936, and a military governor was appointed endowed with extraordinary powers. The military buildup started and in the spring of 1937, the military operations commenced. The Dersim leaders, pleading to be granted self-rule, sent emissaries with a letter to the military governor. In reply, the Tunceli military governor had the emissaries executed. The revenge of Kurds materialized with an ambush that took the lives of ten officers and fifty soldiers. The most respected Alevi cleric of Dersim, septuagenarian Seyyid Rıza, along with seven relatives including his son, were executed in July 1937. Their remains were never recovered.28
The Turkish military, unlike in the case of the Ararat rebellion, wasted no time for in initiating armed operations against the Kurdish insurgents. Over the course of a year, the army units established a strict cordon around Dersim, restricting both locals and outsiders (including journalists) from passing through the mountainous region. The full might of the Turkish armed forces was brought to bear in suppressing the rebellion, an effort that included the use of warplanes and “burning and asphyxiating” chemical bombs. Tens of thousands of people had been killed or deported by the time the armed conflict came to a close in 1938.29
From 1938, the pacification of Dersim, to 1984, the start of the Kurdish insurgency under the leadership of the PKK, the Kurds in Turkey had never taken up arms. The Kurdish issue had submerged into oblivion, and any expression pertinent to Kurds and Kurdishness had sunk into deep silence.
The huge toll of Dersim regarding human life and the immense tragedy that ensued triggered an ongoing debate over whether it was really a Kurdish rebellion in line with those of Sheikh Said and Ararat. While Dersim is treated as a Kurdish rebellion in Turkish military history, the survivor Alevis called it in Zaza the Tertele Dersim (Dersim Genocide) and tried to win international acknowledgment. Whether it was just another suppressed Kurdish revolt or a pacification campaign conducted by the Turkish government against the Kurds resulting in enormous human losses, there is a quasi-consensus that it was an untold tragedy, even conceded as such by Tayyip Erdoğan.
The might of the Turkish military reflecting a new and vibrant power may explain the defeat of successive Kurdish revolts in the first 15 years of the Republic, from its foundation until the death of its founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Equally important in explaining the failure of the Kurdish revolts, however, was the societal structure of the Kurds, which involved linguistic and more importantly sectarian divisions among them. The Sheikh Said rebellion had a religious Sunni leadership and a strong Zaza character, while Khoybun, the political organization that initiated the Ararat rebellion, was overwhelmingly Sunni and Kurmanji. The Kurdish rebel forces, consequently, in the Ararat revolt were mostly Kurmanji. Dersim, however, was an Alevi–Zaza affair.
Alevi Kurds, in light of many years of religious persecution at the hands of Sunni Kurds, had no desire to see a rebellion led by an orthodox Sunni sheikh succeed. Religious divisions, in addition to the tribal politics . . . prevailed over a larger sense of Kurdish nationalism, despite the obvious hostility towards Ankara of both Sunni and Alevi Kurdish groups. Twelve years later, Kirmanci Sunni and Zaza Kurds would return the favor by sitting on their hands while another major Alevi Kurdish revolt was crushed in Dersim (1937–1938). Ihsan Nuri’s Mount Ararat uprising was crushed in 1930 largely due to a similar failure to overcome divisions within Kurdish society.30
The Fourth Revolt or the First All-Kurdish Insurgency
No Kurdish rebellion in Turkish Republican history has been able to achieve an all-Kurdish character. Deprived of vital international support and legitimacy, the limited scope of each such move and the insurmountable cleavages dividing groups have made it easier for a Turkish government that had emerged from a successful national struggle (1919–1922) with increased self-confidence. Furthermore, for the battle-tested strong military of Turkey, it was not difficult to suppress the revolts in a determined manner. In ethno-sectarian terms, the Sheikh Said rebellion had a primarily Sunni–Zaza nature while the Ararat revolt had a Sunni–Kurmanji, and Dersim an Alevi–Zaza nature.
The Kurdish question had to wait until the last quarter of the twentieth century to find a vehicle for an insurgency with a bold aim of engulfing every segment of the Kurdish polity and society, and extending its tentacles to Turkey’s neighboring countries with Kurdish populations and to the European diaspora where hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been residing.
That
