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30.09.2010

ON HISTORY AND ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ARMENIANS OF DERSIM

   

Ruben Melkonyan

R. Melkonyan – the senior expert of the Centre of the Armenian Studies of “Noravank” Foundation, the vice-dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the YSU

Dersim, which is currently on the territory of Turkey, in different periods took a special place for the Armenians, Zazas and Kurds who were established there. Due to its geographic position Dersim had been an asylum for the rebels and those who were persecuted for many times. There is a legend that in that very mountainous province a group of Armenians who had not adopted Christianity in 4th century sheltered. Later, during the Pavlikian and Tondrakian movements Dersim served as an asylum for the followers of those teachings. Its mountainous geographical position had also influenced the characters of people living there – unruliness and courage were wide spread in Dersim. It is also known that after the establishment of the Ottoman rule, Dersim preserved its semi-independent status which bothered Turkish rulers in different periods.

It should be mentioned that besides the autochthons – Armenians, there were also Zazas and Kurds among whom Alevism was rather widespread which presuppose religious tolerance. This religious belonging considerably distinguished Alevi Zazas from Muslims from other regions of Empire, where religious extremism often prevailed.

Friendly relations of the Armenians from Dersim with neighbour Alevi Zazas also played a certain role during the Armenian Genocide in 1915: according to different sources about 30-40 thousand Armenians from both Dersim and other neigbouring regions inhabited by the Armenians were sheltered by Alevi Zazas. It should also be mentioned that local heads of Alevi Zaza tribes saved Armenians because of their faith too, which is mostly anthropocentric. But we must also add that at the same time there were cases when a number of Dersim Kurdish and Zaza tribes collaborated with Ottoman authorities and participated in the massacres of the Armenians and pillage of their property. The evidences of the mean betrayal of Zaza heads of tribes have also preserved.

However, the issue of the Armenians who sheltered in the mountains of Dersim became a subject to discuss and negotiate for the central Ottoman authorities and local heads of tribes because Turkish authorities demanded to deliver up the Armenians. This demand caused a serious problem for Alevis because they faced a difficult choice between the order of the central authorities and their religious principles. And very often the order was declined and when the demands became stricter heads of tribes helped a part of the sheltered Armenians to escape to Eastern Armenia or Russia.

But besides all this, there were many cases registered when Armenians who found shelter with Alevi had to change their names, religion (often outwardly) and present themselves as Alevi Zazas. This circumstance allowed the heads of tribes to say that the suspects were not Armenians but they were Alevi Zazas. And that was the way many thousand Armenians had converted and became Alevis. A part of them managed to preserve openly or secretly their national traditions and the other part merged with Alevis. It is important to mention that not so radical stance of the surrounding Alevi population allowed Armenians from Dersim and their generations to preserve some elements of their Armenian identity if they wanted till our days, but, nevertheless, the predominant element had decisive influence on the self-consciousness of the generations of the Armenians.

In this regard the well-known Armenian Mirakian kin, a part of which settled in different countries, including Armenia, after leaving Dersim, but some of them still live in Dersim under the name of “Mirak Ashiret”. Unfortunately, as the specialists who visited them mention, today’s generations of Mirakians preserved only a memory of their Armenian descent. It is remarkable that even today they are proud of the rebellious and bellicose image of their ancestors – Mirakians, which make those generations acknowledge their origin.

As a result of the centuries-long Armenian presence in Dersim and the fact that many thousand Armenians found shelter there during the Genocide, many elements of Armenian culture, habits, language were passed to the Zaza environment. For example, in the Zaza language there is a layer of loanwords from Armenian, a number of Zaza holidays and habits have Armenian features, till present a number of old Armenian place names is used among people of Dersim. But it should also be mentioned that the Turkish anti-Armenian propaganda has influenced Dersim too and there are facts which come to prove that even in Alevi environment being an Armenian was not always encouraged.

The preconceived and hostile attitude of the Ottoman Empire in regard to Dersim continued and even intensified in republican Turkey: the semi-independent status of Dersim turned into one of the issues which cause concern to the Kemalist authorities.

Back in the 1930s Kemalist authorities initiated the radical solution of Dersim issue: the methods of solution were the same the Young Turks used. In 1937-1938 in Dersim genocide was perpetrated by the state during which the methods used during the Armenian Genocide were used. According to different sources during the genocide in Dersim 70-90 thousand people were killed and the whole population of the province was exiled to other Turkish provinces. The issue of the Dersim genocide needs scrutiny but we would like to turn to one of its episodes. We can clearly say that one of the main and important target groups for the Turkish authorities were the Armenians who sheltered there after 1915. Many facts, evidences of the survivors come to prove that the events of 1937-1938 were the continuation of the Armenian Genocide for the Armenians from Dersim; over those years a part of the Armenians who survived in 1915 was killed. It should also be mentioned that Turkish authorities presented the fact that Zazas sheltered Armenians as substantiation for massacres to the troops which took part in the Dersim genocide.

Today in Turkey a research is carried out within the scope of which the stories concerning the Dersim genocide are collected and, due to the fact that it is very difficult to find any objective data about those events in official Turkish documents, the confessions of those who survived and took part in those events are of important as a source for the study. Thus, one of the Turkish army soldiers who participated in those events confessed that their commanders before ordering them to kill Zazas substantiated it in the following way: “They are those who sheltered Armenians and this is the reason they must be destroyed”.

It is interesting and very remarkable that in our days among the Armenians from Dersim a process of attaching importance to their origin and reclaiming their identity can be observed. Lower we will bring some remarkable facts concerning the current conditions of the Armenians from Dersim which was wrote down in 2009 during the “9th Mndzurian Festival”. Thus, the participant of Mndzurian Festival, Bagrat Estukian from “Agos” daily mentions: “I already felt there was something native about those people. I had read before that there were many of those whose ancestors were of Armenian descent. But I never thought that there were so many of them… The other surprising phenomenon was that nobody tried to conceal its descent. People there got used to present themselves through the integrity of Alevi religion, Kurdish political movements and Armenian identity. This combination, which is strange for us, Armenians from Istanbul, is quite a natural phenomenon for people from Dersim. … You can meet the splinters of Armeniancy all over Anatolia. And in Dersim you can meet Armenians. They are neither crypto-Armenians nor those who disclaimed their roots; they are simply special, unique”. The other evidence presented by Bagrat Estukian speaks about the peculiar way the traces of Christianity have preserved among the Armenians from Dersim: “One of them took out a cross from under his shirt, showed it to me and said: “Don’t get me wrong, I’m atheist, and Alevism is my culture, but this cross is a symbol that I’m a grandson of Shoghakat grandmother, the son of Hambardzumian kin”.

In August 2010 it became clear that a group of Armenians from Dersim initiate the establishment of the NGO to shift the process of reclaiming of their identity to a qualitatively new level. The NGO have to carry researches concerning the culture, history, religion, language of the Armenians from Dersim. The initiator is the Armenian from Dersim Selahettin Gultekin who has also changed his name and became Mirhan Gultekin. As Mirhan mentions one of the goals of the organization is to make so that the Armenians from Dersim and their generations return to their roots, live without hiding their real identity, bear Armenian and not Turkish or Kurdish names, protect Armenian churches, monuments, graveyards in Dersim, to restore officially old Armenian names of the villages. “Armenians from Dersim should protect their identity and culture. They should reclaim their origin; they should send their children to churches. For all those purposes we must have an organization and I call all the Armenians and first of all those from Dersim, to help this organization”, - mentions Mirhan Gultekin.

Let us also remind in the end that such an organization was created by the Armenians from Sasun living in Turkey who try to carry works to preserve Armenian churches and holy places in Sasun. Of course, under the state policy of Turkey those organizations cannot have a broad field of activity but the attempts of different groups of Armenians in Turkey to self-organize are remarkable and, at the same time, they put forward interesting developments connected with searching and “reclaiming” national identity.

“Globus National Security”, issue 5

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