Following the 2013 truce between the government and the PKK, security loosened up in the Munzur Valley. Roadside checkpoints were unmanned; the commando base in Ovacik was dismantled; the oppressive feeling of strict oversight by unfriendly authorities had largely lifted.
For the past several years, some people have been spending summers in the villages from which they were evacuated, pitching tents beside the rubble of their former homes. Some are beginning to think about repairing their houses and returning to live in them year-round. They don’t think the military would stop them now. They know the PKK won’t stop them. The only thing that could stop them, they say, are the dams…..
For more on the Dersim Massacre, start with:
Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988) by Martin van Bruinessen.
Relocating Dersim: Turkish State-Building and Kurdish Resistance, 1931-1938 by Nicole Watts.
Dersim Massacre, 1937-1938 by Hans-Lukas Kieser.
For more on the Evacuation of 1994, start with:
Forced evacuations and destruction of villages in Dersim (Tunceli) and Western Bingöl, Turkish Kurdistan, September-November 1994 by Martin van Bruinessen
Forest burning as a counterinsurgency strategy in Eastern
Turkey by Joost Jongerden et al.
Turkey’s Failed Policy to Aid the Forcibly Displaced in the Southeast by Human Rights Watch.
Writer's note: At the time of this writing - August 2015 - the truce was in tatters, following air attacks launched by the Turkish military against PKK bases in northern Iraq. In Dersim, the PKK reaction was limited, but - at this time - it is too early to guess how severely the military might respond.
