Dersim81 is the region in central Eastern Turkey surrounded by Erzincan province to the north and west, Elazığ province to the south and west and Bingöl province to the east. The name Dersim was Turkified as Tunceli in 1936, by which an absolute commitment shown to subduing the province hitherto had not been completely brought under central government control, as one of many results of assimilative politics directed against ethnic and religious minorities existing in the Republic of Turkey. The village formerly known as Kalan — also known as Mameki or Mamekiye — was designated as the capital of Tunceli province and its name was also changed to Tunceli.
Dersim, a rugged and mountain fastness region with narrow valleys, deep ravines and lots of rivers and their arms, is arguably the most distinctive province in today’s Turkey in regard to its ethnic composition, spiritual and religious character, linguistic individuality, sociopolitical structure, and folklore. Popular opinion, both etic and emic, suggests that Dersim is a part of Kurdish-inhabited areas, and Dersim people are ethnically Kurdish whose only difference from the remaining Kurds is the religious sect (Alevism)82 that they belong to. In his detailed account of social, religious, and historical aspects of Dersim region written at the beginning of the twentieth century, orientalist L. Molyneux-Seel suggests that he collected enough information in his two-month visit in Dersim to support the theory put forward by Armenian bishop of Kighi that Dersim people are of pure Armenian race, and uses the term Dersimli, which means the native of Dersim, for Dersim people (1914, p. 49). However, he made plentiful references to Kurdishness of Dersim people and Dersim region as a part of Kurdish land:
81 The boundaries of Dersim were larger than those of today’s Tunceli province. Before 1936, southern part of Erzincan Province, northwestern part of Bingöl Province, northeastern part of Elazığ Province, northeastern part of Malatya Province, and eastern part of Sivas Province were deemed within the boundaries of Dersim region.
82 Alevism is a syncretic and heterodox religious formation that is regarded as an extreme breakaway from Shi’a Islam. Along with several fundamental tenets of Shi’a Islam such as adherence to the Twelve Imams, it incorporates various elements of ancient pre-Islamic religions such as Shamanism, Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Yazdânism, and Christianity (White, 1995, p. 3).
The Armenian bishop of Kighi, who has made a long study of the Dersim Kurds, maintains that they are of pure Armenian race…
… The Dersim villages are very superior to the collection of mud hovels which pass for villages in other parts of Kurdistan [emphases added]. (L. Molyneux-Seel, 1914, p. 49) As for ethnic identity, the knottiest problem for Dersim people and for individuals who want to discover Dersim and its people is finding the right term for their own independent existence. A general inference can be drawn from the arguments of L. Molyneux-Seel that Dersim is one of the many regions in today’s Turkey that used to have a considerable Armenian population. As Arakelova has indicated, language, religion, and culture of Dersim people have abundant in traces of Armenian influence (1999, p. 398). According to both researchers, Dersim people also had spoken Armenian before the massacre and expulsion of Armenians in 1915 from the Eastern provinces of today’s Turkey until the 1930s when the last Armenians left the region, and Armenians who preferred to stay on their native lands voluntarily converted to Alevism (Arakelova, 1999, p. 398; Molyneux-Seel, 1914, p. 67). Kaya, who has presented one of the latest comprehensive studies on this matter, conversely, regards Zazas as people who constitute a distinguishing community within Kurds and excludes Kurds both as intruders and influencers as he emphasizes the distinct character of Zaza region:
The Zaza region is an area on which Persians, Armenians, Arabs, Mongols and Turks have left their marks. But these groups have been perceived as intruders and oppressors. Throughout history, the local population has successfully fought against intruders to preserve its distinctive character. They are also very uninfluenced by modernity and are associated with an agricultural lifestyle. (2011, p. 3)
Similarly, Armenians use the term Zaza Kurds to “distinguish them as a specific group from a common Kurdish background”, as suggested by Arakelova (1999, p. 398).
Even though Dersimness provides an honorable sense of identity for Dersim people, and Dersimli or Dersimi seems to connote all characteristics that Dersim people have, it also hides them all since none of them is explicit, and furthermore, replacement of Dersim with Tunceli in 1936 has been detracting the effect from the word Dersim creates per se ever since. The term, Alevi or Kızılbaş83 (other spellings
occur: Kizilbash, Qizilbash), employed by many Dersim people, on the other hand, comes from the religious sect (Alevism) that a large majority of Dersim people adhered to. Demographic predominance of Alevis in Dersim, in addition, provides the province with one of the particular distinguishing features in Turkey. Nonetheless, in defining Dersim people’s ethnic entity, it is barely adequate by itself because Alevism is also practiced in various parts of Turkey, and the religious beliefs, practices and ethos of Dersim Alevis, which has various Christian and pagan traces, widely differ from those of central and western Anatolian Alevis. In recent years, many Dersim people, particularly the ones living in diaspora, esteem the word Zaza for the construction of ethnic belonging, with reference to the language spoken, above all other terms. However, Zaza is spoken not only by people living in Dersim but also by some people residing in other provinces remaining outside Dersim. Many Zazas also speak Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish) fluently, which is quite influential in the entire region. There are also a number of Dersim people speaking Kurmanji in addition to the fact that many Zaza people who follow Sunni sect of Islam, the sect followed by approximately 75 percent of the Kurds, live in neighbor provinces. An overall impression of mine suggests that while having a special affinity with Kurdishness, Dersim people attach great importance to emphasizing their belief system as both different from that of Alevi Turks and that of Sunni Zazas or Sunni Kurds, thereby making an effort to construct their distinct identity.
Terminology used by scholars on this issue has yet to be compromised as well. Not only do insiders have a disagreement but also outsiders as well as many scholars who carry out research into Kurds, Alevi culture, Dersim, and Zazas do not seem to meet each other halfway on giving a descriptive name to Dersim region and Dersim people. Arakelova, for instance, selects “Zaza” as the most suitable term (1999), and Kaya prefers the term “Zaza Kurds” (2011, passim), while Bruinessen, disregarding for their struggle for ethnic self-definition, uses the term “Kurdish Alevis” for all Alevi people who speak Kurmanji and Zaza without drawing any conclusion that they are essentially Kurdish (1997, p. 2), and McDowall, who considers Dersim a part of north-western Kurdistan with Zaza-speaking population, chooses the term “Dersim Kurds” (2004, p. 10, p. 208).
as synonymous with Alevi, is mostly used pejoratively in Turkey.
In an anonymously written report (Dersim Raporu)84 that was made public in 2010,
the Republic of Turkey, as the main hegemonic power across the region, also seems to have been in confusion on this issue. Whereas there is a strong tendency to see Dersim people as citizens who have forgotten their Turkishness, several rationalizations are made towards the association of Dersim people with Kurdishness:
Until the Tanzimat (Reform) period, Kurds’ minor local actions and major brigandage movements in eastern provinces inhabited by Kurds were disciplined by force. Towards Dersim that shows the similar disposition, on the other hand, this method was found inconvenient and a muddle along policy was followed. (Çalışlar, 2010, p. 153; emphases added)
I am neither willing to invent a new term nor to use a prepared one, thereby simply using the phrase “Dersim people.” On the other hand, having a particular regard for Dersim people who still use the word Dersim for their native land, I would rather use “Dersim,” with the exception of a few official designations, than use today’s name “Tunceli.”
Language is another issue that is more problematic than it seems. The language spoken in Dersim province and in some parts of other provinces such as Erzincan, Elazığ, Bingöl, Muş, Sivas, and Erzurum is named as Kirmanjki (other terms occur: Alevica, Dersimki, Dimilki, Northern Zaza, So-Bê, Zaza, Zazaki, Zonê Ma) by Ethnologue.85 According to Ethnologue, Kirmanjki is one of the two member languages of a macrolanguage called Zaza. The other member of Zaza, on the other hand, is Dimli86 (also named as Dimilî, Southern Zaza, Zaza, Zazakî), which is spoken mainly in Elazığ, Bingöl, and Diyarbakır provinces, upper courses of Fırat (Euphrates), Kızılırmak, and Murat rivers. Bruinessen’s detailed description casts light on Dersim people’s numerous designations of their language:
84 Dersim Raporu, estimated to be written in the 1930s, and printed only a hundred as “confidential,” “private,” and “under the record,” was discovered in the Library of İzzettin Çalışlar, one of the commanders of the Turkish War of Independence.
85 Ethnologue, founded by a distinguished linguist Richard S. Pittman, is an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages. See the Url http://www.ethnologue.com.
86 Dimli and Kirmanjki are mostly used interchangeably. In practice, there appears to be only one language with slight differences among various regions but different designations by their speakers.
When speaking Zaza, Dersimis often refer to themselves as Kırmanc and to their language as Kırmancki… When speaking Turkish or other foreign languages, both may in fact translate these names as Kurd and Kurdish, which appears to support the Kurdish nationalist viewpoint. However, the Dersimis (when speaking Zaza) call the Kurmanci language Kırdasi, and they refer to the Sunni Kurdish tribes as Kır or Kur. Their eastern Zaza-speaking but Sunni neighbours, in the districts astride the Murad river, are called neither Kur nor Kırmanc but Zaza and their language Zazaki, although it is practically identical with the Kırmancki spoken in Dersim. Another term used by some Zaza speakers (mostly in the Siverek region, but apparently here and there in Dersim as well) is Dımıli… (1997, p. 17)
Since it is the only common word that suggests both Kirmanjki and Dimli, and the ethnic description is inclined to be made with it, Zaza will be used as an umbrella term in this study to indicate the language spoken by supposedly all Dimli and Kirmanjki speakers. There are also speakers of Northern Kurdish, so-called Kurmanji,87 (other spellings and terms occur: Kermancî, Kirmancî, Kurdi, Kurdî, Kurmancî) in Dersim province and of course, almost all Kurmanji or Zaza speakers are bilinguals since these languages have been subject to assimilatory pressure from official language Turkish for years.
In spite of easily perceivable similarities, Zaza fairly differs from Kurmanji in terms of its grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, hence the main debate is on whether Zaza is a dialect of Kurdish or it is a separate language. In Ethnologue, both Zaza and Kurdish are grouped among the Northwestern Iranian languages, and yet Zaza is classified as a separate language group as Zaza-Gorani that includes six other dialects. Linguists such as David N. MacKenzie (1989, p. 541), Viladimir Minorsky (1992), and historians such as Mehrdad R. Izady (pp. 167, 169, 173-74) are of the opinion that Zaza is a separate language whereas specialists such as Hassanpour, who severely expresses his disapproval of the views of those researchers, claims that it is not as essentially different from many dialects of Kurdish as to be classified as a separate language (1992, p. 25). Contradicting views of insiders about their language are no different than those of specialists. There are many Zazas who refuse to accept their language as Kurdish and many others who claim vice versa. For now it seems reasonable to evaluate this subject either within the concept of “daughter languages” (Kottak, 2002) or within Mutlu’s approach stating that Kurdish languages are as
87 Kurmanji, one of the main Kurdish languages that has the greatest number of speakers in Turkey, is the most accepted term in academia rather than Northern Kurdish.
diverse in nature as Romance languages (1996, p. 519). It should be taken into account that language is not the only rallying point, and indicative of ethnic and national affinity, and that many people who identify themselves as ethnically Kurdish or Zaza although they themselves do not speak any Kurdish at all.
This study concerns itself with cultural expression caused by conflict, war, and contentious politics, and with the manifestation of feelings into which these concepts blended primarily in and through music and dance, and other related performable acts. Clearly, mapping an anatomy of war under discussion will provide a useful tool for developing a healthier insight for the study.