The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38)

Abstract

In 1990 a book was published in Turkey that by its very title accused Turkey's one-party regime of the 1930s of having committed genocide in the Kurdish district of Dersim. The book was immediately banned and did not generate the debate its author, the sociologist Ismail Besikçi, had hoped for. Besikçi was the first, and for a long time the only, Turkish intellectual to publicly criticize Turkey's official ideology and policies regarding the Kurds, beginning with his 1969 study of the socioeconomic conditions of eastern Turkey through a whole series of increasingly polemical works. He paid a heavy price for his moral and intellectual courage; all his books were banned, and he spent more than ten years in prison for writing them. Although my conclusions may be slightly different from his, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to his committed scholarship, and dedicate this chapter to him.