Roza Şaye – the Black Day, 4 May 1937, marks the beginning of the Dersim Genocide, a massacre carried out by the Turkish state, with at least 50,000 people, most of them Alevi Kurds, being killed and thousands more injured and being forced to flee their homelands.
The Turkish government has continued to deny the Dersim Genocide, just as they are doing with the Armenian Genocide.
On the 87th anniversary of the Dersim Genocide, the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) published a statement condemning the massacre and demanding the Turkish state be held accountable.
The statement begins by remembering the thousands of people massacred, including tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people and calling the genocide a “black and bloody page of Turkish history”. Furthermore, it is made clear that the genocide was carried out under official orders from the Turkish state, with the aim of “eradicating the population of Dersim” by carrying out ground and air attacks.
The KNK continued, stating that before the massacre, the name of Dersim was changed to Tunceli (tr. Iron Hand), which they view as part of the anti-Kurdish politics of the Turkish state, trying to deny the existence of the Kurdish people.
The continuation of these politics is emphasised by the KNK, noting that “Today this state decision for a genocide, these massacres and these politics are continuing. The hearts of the Kurdish people will forever be in pain because of this massacre and they will not and cannot forget it.”
The KNK ended their statement by stating that these actions and their actors should never be forgotten, that the Turkish state needs to be held accountable for its crimes and that the fight for justice needs to be continued in a determined way.
The co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, Tülay Hatimoğulları, made a visit to Dersim to remember the genocide, throwing roses into the river Munzur, which according to witnesses of the massacre, was coloured red with the blood of the victims during the massacre. Hatimoğulları stated on X that “we will not forget the lives lost in the Dersim Genocide”.
The DEM Party also published a statement condemning the genocide and exposing the official orders from the Turkish state which led to the massacre, known as the “Tunceli law” which stated that “Dersim must be either reformed or rehabilitated”.
Furthermore, they shed light on the fact that even though the Turkish government, under the rule of the AKP, has apologised for the massacre, it has “done nothing to compensate for this suffering and continues its assimilation policies” and that the prohibitions on the Kurdish language and the Alevi belief are a continuation of the massacre.
Exposing the brutal nature of this genocide, the DEM Party explained that in this massacre, “tens of thousands of oppressed people were shot, bayoneted, bombed, thrown off cliffs, burned, poisoned, executed, slaughtered and exiled”.
The DEM Party ended their statement by honouring the historic resistance of the people of Dersim and emphasising that they will not stop struggling until this genocide is enlightened.
