Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Nov 20 2009
If Dersim was a massacre, what was the other thing?
Friday, November 20, 2009
ERTUÄ?RUL Ã-ZKÃ-K
One of the things we have been talking over is this: Will the
Republican People’s Party, or CHP, lose votes because of Onur Ã-ymen’s
remarks over the Dersim revolt?
Discussions over the incident are taking a different turn, a turn for
settling scores in internal politics. I am not fond of Ã-ymen as a
politician. I have criticized him a lot in the past. And I believe his
recklessness in this incident harms the CHP.
Still, I cannot help myself but ask the following question: Is the
ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, benefiting from this
ongoing discussion as Ã-ymen continues to harm the CHP?
Let’s make a self-criticism here. Look and see what kind of situations
we have to be ready for in the discussions over the Dersim revolt:
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an chose the words `Dersim massacre’
as he was criticizing Ã-ymen’s remarks during a plenary session in
Parliament. Mr. Prime Minister had issued a statement recently over
the `Darfur massacre.’ He had said, `Muslims don’t commit massacre…’
(According to some sources, he did not say `don’t commit¦’ but `cannot
commit¦’) Who, then, bombed out caves and cut the throats of Alevi
Kurds in Dersim?
Were they `Christian Turks?’
The first beneficial result of the `Dersim’ debate is this: That means
Muslims do commit, or can commit, massacre. Then we have to take the
second step:
We shouldn’t withhold a similar categorization for the events in
Darfur. If the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir gets offended, we
have an excuse in foreign policy then:
`Look my friend! I do call what my own people commit `massacre’ so
don’t be offended by my remarks.’
Let’s move on to the bigger issue now: Turkey has tremendously
benefited from Ã-ymen’s unfortunate remarks over the Dersim revolt.
Even I didn’t know enough about the Dersim incident, but I have
learned now.
Let me make a confession here: I thought that it was one of the 28
suppressions of Kurdish revolts. But now I’m reading books about
Dersim. But I haven’t been able to get one answer yet: How many people
died in the Dersim incident?
I have checked the figures; somewhere between 7,000 and 90,000 people
were killed: The second question is this: If the killing of
7,000-90,000 is a `massacre,’ according to even the most official
voice, what then will we call the losses in the Armenian question?
According to Armenian allegations, a total of 1.5 million were killed
in 1915. But let’s say the death toll was 600,000. How many times more
of those who were killed in Dersim? If the number of dead in Dersim
was 7,000, it is 200 times more; if 90,000 then 17 times more. Yes, if
the Dersim incident was a massacre, then what was the Armenian
incident?
Is it called a big massacre, a huge one or a tremendous mass-killing?
As this question is posed to the top authority in Turkey, what will be
the `official answer?’ He will probably say `Don’t be hard on
yourself. There is a universal term used for that and it starts with
`so-called’.’
The Dersim debate in Parliament means we are refusing our `official
history theses.’ That’s fine, but how will we get by with adopting an
unofficial political language at home and an official language abroad?
Politicians exploiting the Dersim revolt for electoral should focus on
this, too.
My last word is this: Ã-ymen’s remarks weren’t too clever. But it may
not be a good thing to use them as political gimmicks.
If we successfully manage to reveal what was done to our own people in
Dersim, then debates over Dersim happen to be extremely useful.
* Mr. ErtuÄ?rul Ã-zkök is the editor-in-chief of daily Hürriyet in which
this piece appeared Friday. It was translated into English by the
Daily News staff.
f-dersim-was-a-massacre-how-about-the-other-2009-1 1-20
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress