Politics of madness: narrativizing, memorializing, sacralizing Şeywuşen (1930

Poli t i c s of Ma dne ss :
Narrativiz ing, Me m ori alizin g, Sacra l i zing
Şey wuşen ( 1 9 30–1995) in Ders i m, Turk ey

vorgelegt von
Çiçek İ len giz (MA)
ORC I D: 0000-0002 -1 309-1146

von der Fakultät I – Geistes- und Bildun gswi ss enschaften
der Technischen Universitä t B erlin
zur Erlangung des akademisc hen Gr a des

Doktor der Philosophie
- Dr. phil. –

genehmigte Dissertation

Promoti onsau sschuss:
Vorsitzende: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Sprin g orum
Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Margrit Pernau
Gutachter: PD Dr. Markus Dressler

Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 27. Septe mber 2019

Berlin 2020

Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. 4
ZUSAMMENFA SSUNG ............................................................................................................................... 5
Acknowledgm ents .................................................................................................................................... 6
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Presentati on of the case .................................................................................................................... 11
Conceptual fram ework ...................................................................................................................... 16
Production of knowledge .............................................................................................................. 16
State violence, emotion and subjectivity ...................................................................................... 19
Madness and p olitics ................................................................................................ ..................... 22
Space, temp o ralit y, and em otions ................................................................................................ 26
Religion, secular ism and cu lturalization ........................................................................................ 29
Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 34
Reading the diss ertat i on ................................................................................................................... 40
CHAPTER I. CREA TION OF OTHERNESS : DIFFERENT P HA SES OF STATE VIOL ENCE IN THE CREA TION OF
DERSIMI IDEN TITY ................................................................................................................................ . 43
Defining the injury of Dersim ............................................................................................................ 44
The backyard o f the e m pir e .............................................................................................................. 51
Dersim during the Arm enian Genocide ............................................................................................. 53
Imagining a city and making it hap pen: The e mergenc e of Tunceli fr om the ashe s of Dersim ........ 55
Uprising or N o t? The Incid ents of Dersim 1937 – 38? ........................................................................ 60
Confining who m? The es tablishment of the Elaz ığ H ospital ............................................................. 63
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ ......... 70
CHAPTER II. AF FLICTION OF OTHERNESS: BECOMING MAD IN D E RSIM OF THE 1960S – 70S ................ 73
The era of radi cal political i maginations and brutal s tate violence ................................ .................. 74
Discovering madness: H ow Şeywuş en became a popular madman ................................................. 80
Plausible r easons for goin g mad in D ersi m ....................................................................................... 85
Failed mascul inity: The glue keepin g 1915, 1938, 198 0 and betrayal to g ether ............................... 88
Productive eff ect s of violen ce: For m ati on of a new ide ntity as mad ............................................... 90
Performing the injur y: Fluctuatin g dates, circular te mporalities ...................................................... 93
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ ......... 98
CHAPTER III. FRO M A HOMELESS MADMAN TO HOLY- MA D : HOW ŞEY WUŞEN BECAME A BUDELA
AFTER THE 1 980 COUP ................................ ........................................................................................ 1 01
The coup of 1 980 ............................................................................................................................. 102
Dersim in the p ost -c oup period ...................................................................................................... 1 06
Becoming h oly-mad ......................................................................................................................... 1 12

Unpacking the di vinity attribu ted to Şeywuşen .............................................................................. 116
Prophecies and m ira cles .................................................................................................................. 121
Keramet-narra tive I: Protectin g the lineage ................................................................................ 123
Keramet-narra tive II: Warnin g about an upc oming dan ger ........................................................ 125
Keramet- narra tive III: Şeywu şen travelling faster than a car ...................................................... 1 26
Keramet-narra tive IV: Immun ity against har m ........................................................................... 126
Dreams of Ş eywuşen ....................................................................................................................... 129
Granting preg nancy ................................................................................................ ..................... 130
Saving the dr eamer ..................................................................................................................... 1 32
Bringing good news ................................ ..................................................................................... 134
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ ....... 1 35
CHAPTER IV. TRAN SGRESS ING THE INTE RD ICTI ON OF MOURNIN G IN NATIONAL PUBLIC SPAC E
THROUGH ME M ORIA LIZATI ON OF MADNESS ................................................................ ..................... 137
Invention of the city of denial : The making of Tunceli throug h the Dersim G enocide (1937 – 38) .. 139
A city of unr est in the 1990s and the s tatue of a madman ............................................................. 1 47
The inauguration o f the s tatue of Şeywuşen : Non -instru mental engag ement with lo ss ............... 154
Healing throug h me mory: Dersi m be coming an open-air museum in the 2000 s ........................... 158
The return of the gravel ess: The statue of Se yyid Rıza ................................................................... 1 63
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ ....... 1 68
CHAPTER V. THE T ENSION BETWEEN SECULAR POLITI CS AND RITUA LS WOVEN A ROUND MADNESS
............................................................................................................................................................. 174
Making the sit e for de votional practice: Cemevi and jia ra ............................................................. 175
Institutionalizati o n of Alevi sm in Dersim ........................................................................................ 183
The therapeutic p ower of jiara ................................................................................................ ....... 1 89
The jiaras attribut ed to budelas ................................................................................................ ...... 1 96
Yesil Evliya z iyareti ....................................................................................................................... 196
Şeywuşen’s and Pir Ali’s jiaras ..................................................................................................... 2 00
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ ....... 2 06
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 2 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 217

ABSTRACT
Focusing on th e memorialization, sacralization and politicization of madness throu gh the case
of the holy-madma n Şeywuşen (Hüse y in Tatar, 1930– 95), thi s disser tation explores the
relationship between the political and spiritual spheres in the heavil y militar ized and politically
contested landscape of D ersim (officially Tunc eli) in eastern Turke y , the o nly cit y in Turke y
where the Kurdish-Alevi population forms a majorit y . Tracing the life story of Şe y wuşen allows
reassessing the historical events that became la ndmarks in the collective memor y of the
contested landscape of Dersim: the genoc idal vi olence experienced in 1915 and in 1938, the
coup d’ét at of 1980 and military clashes betw ee n the Kurdish movement an d the Turkish A rmed
Forces in the 1990s. Using historical and ethnographic material collected in Dersim , along with
oral history interviews conducted with members of the Dersim diaspora living in Germany , the
dissertation analyzes the wa y s in which the identit y of Ş ey w uşen as a holy -madman is
constructed as a metaphor for the injury c aused by the racializ ed and secularized state violence
and the source of therapeutic power to he al that injur y .
Analy zin g the wa y s in which Şeywuşe n ha s been memorialized a nd sac ralized , the disserta ti on
explores the particular ex perienc e of the political in a region that has bee n pathologized and
labelled as “irrational” by diverse political actors throughout the late Ottoman period and in
modern Turkey. Through a gendered analysis of the narrated reasons for Şey w uşen ’s madness,
it frames the formation of the holy-mad identit y a s the process of affliction of otherne ss that
has been attributed to the region. Looking at rit uals and practices woven around holy -mad
figures, it conceptualizes hol y- madness as a sit e where a brutall y sil enced past haunts the
present in creative wa y s that allows bounded temporalities to be transcended and to construct
differe nt identit y claims. The inauguration of a statue of Şe y wuşen in Dersim during the 1990s
enables an anal y sis of the li mits of heroic and militarist representation in the Turkish public
sphere. The dissertation proposes that tracing t he political c onnotations of hol y-madness
challenge s the limits of what can be articulated in the realm of politics throu gh a spe cial
emphasis on what is not conducive to be instrumentaliz ed by poli tical or soc ial movements.
Shifting attention f rom what state viol ence dest roy s to what it produces, this dissertation
contributes not only to studies on the Middle East but also to the history and anthr opology o f
state violence. Wit h its focus on the sacred character ist ics of madness, it offers an original
contribution to the conte mporary literature on po litics, which is wide l y di scussed within the
secular rational framework. Bringing into conversation t he literature on space, state violen ce,
and emotions, it illustrates that space-makin g cannot be thou g ht of separately from the
inscription of its spatial emotional regime. The dis sertation also contribute s to t he litera ture on
secularism by examining the challenge that representations of hol y -madness, and the devotional
practice s woven around it , pose to secular con ceptions of politics.

ZUSAMMENF ASSUNG
Anhand de r Biografie de s g öttlichen Wahnsinnigen (budela) Şe y wuşen (H üsey in T atar, 1930 -
1995) untersucht diese Dissertation das Verhältnis von göttlichem W ahnsinn und staatlich -
finanzierter Gewalt in der politisch heftig umstrittenen Region um Dersim (offiziell Tunc eli) in
der Ost- Türkei. Der Lebensgeschichte Şe y w uşens folgend, denkt die Dissertation die politische
Geschichte Dersims, de r einzige n Stadt in de r Türkei, in de r die aleviti sch -kurdische
Bevölkerung in der Me hrheit ist, neu. Das Nachzeichnen der Lebensgeschichte Şeywuşens
erlaubt eine N eubewertung der hist orischen Ereignisse, die eine z entra le Rolle im kollektiven
Gedäc htnis des umstrittenen Dersims spielen: die genozidale Gewalt v on 1915 und 1938, der
Staatsstreich von 1980 und die militärischen Auseinandersetzunge n zwischen der kurdischen
Bewegung und der türkischen Arm ee. Auf Grundl age hist orischer und ethn ologischer Quellen
aus Dersim und Oral History Interviews mit Mitgliedern der Dersimdiaspora in Deutschland
analy siert die Dissertation die Rolle von staatlicher Gewalt in Narrativen und die emotionale
Bindung an Fig uren des göttlichen Wahnsinns.
Durch die An aly s e der Formen von M emorialisierung und Sakralis ierung Şe y wuşens
untersucht die Dissertation die besondere Erfa hrung des P olitischen in einer Reg ion, die durch
diverse politische Akteure seit dem sp äten Osmanische n Reich und in der gesamten türkischen
Geschichte imme r wieder pathologisiert und als „irrational“ bezeichnet wo rden ist. Mit hilfe
einer Genderanal y se der vorgebrachten Gründe fü r Şeywuşens W ahnsinn fasst diese S tudie die
Entstehung einer Identität des göttlichen W ahnsinns als einen Prozess auf, der aus der
Zusc hreibun g der Re g ion als das „Andere“ ents teht. Indem si e Rituale und P raktiken um
Fig uren d es göttlichen W ahnsinns untersucht, konz eptualisiert die Dissertation den göttlichen
Wahnsinn als einen Ort, an dem gewaltsam unterdrückte Vergangenheit und emotionale
Bindungen ausgedrückt werden. Der Fokus auf die Erri chtung der Statue Şeywuşens in der
politischen Atmosphäre der 1990er Jahre erlaubt es, die Gr enzen heroischer und militaristischer
Repräsentation in der türkischen Öffentlichkeit aufzuzeigen. Die Dissertati on regt an, dass die
Analy se der politischen Konnotationen des göttlichen Wahnsinns die Grenzen des Sagbaren im
politischen Raum in Frage stellt. Dabei achtet sie besonders auf das, was nicht durch politische
oder soziale Beweg ungen instrumentalisiert werden kann.
Indem sie die Aufmerksamkeit von dem, w as staatliche G ewalt zerstört, auf d as lenkt, was
Gewalt hervorbringt, leistet diese Disse rtation nicht nur einen Beitrag zu Studien des Nahen
und Mittleren Ostens, sondern a uch zur Geschichte und Anthropologie von staatlicher Gewalt.
Durch ihren Fokus auf d ie göttlichen Eigenschaften von Wahnsinn trägt sie mit einem neuen
Blickwinkel zur derzeitigen Literatur über das P olitische bei, die größtenteils im säkular -
rationalen Bereich bleibt. I ndem sie die L it eratur über R aum, st aa tliche Gewa lt und Emotionen
mite inander ins Ge spräch bringt, zeigt die Studie, dass die Aushandlung von Raum untrennbar
von den rä umlichen emot ionalen Ordnungen ist. Außerdem trä g t die Dissertation z ur L it eratur
des Säkularismus bei, indem sie die Herausforderung unte rsucht, die die Repr äs entation
göttlichen W ahnsinns und der damit verbundenen Andachtspraktiken an säkulare Konzepte des
Politischen stellt.

Acknowledg m en ts
This research mainly m aterialized between Berl in and Dersim, and would not have been
possible without the support of man y people and instit utions. First of all, I would like to express
my de epest gratitude to m y interlocutors who shared their lives with me. W ithout their kindness
and willingness to think together about the kind s of questions I had in mind this project would
not have bee n realized.
I am thankful fo r the ge nerous financial support of the Inter national Max P lanck Research
School “Moral E conomies of Mod ern Societies , ” the Heinrich Böll Sti ftung and Zentrums für
Antisemitismusforschung a t the Technisch e Universität Berlin.
I am deeply indebted to my committee membe rs, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Mar g rit Pernau
and Markus Dressler for their endless support, invaluable intellectual guidance and critical
engagement. The y were present whenever I need ed guidance. I would like to thank C hristoph
Neumann who supported me throu ghout my research. I want to express m y appreciation to Juli a
Wambach for her ge nuine support.
I ow e m y gratitude to Banu Karaca, without whose inspirational work, encouragement and
support nothing would have wo rk ed out. I am d eeply ind ebted to h er ma gical pres enc e in m y
intellectual life. I am deeply thankful to Bil gin Ayata ; without her insightful and challenging
comments and our intellectual exchange this work would not be the same. I would like to
express my profound gratitude to Georges Kha lil who made impossi bilities possi ble. I a m ver y
thankful to Kader Konuk for her support.
I am indebte d to Shannon Dawd y , Alireza Doosdar and Hussein Ali Agra ma who made time to
critically engage with my work du ring m y fellows hip at the Unive rsit y of C hicago. I ben efitted
greatly from our exchange. I am thankful to Benno Gammerl and Dorothee Wierling who
helped formulat e m y oral history questionnaire. Their feedback helped me to find m y wa y i n
the world of oral history . I am gratef ul to Prem Kumar Rajaram and Vlad Naumescu who
encouraged me to follow m y intellectual curiosities during m y master ’s degree at the C entral
European U niversit y .
I am greatly indebted to Ahmet Kerim Gülte kin who accomp anied me throughout my re search
journey . I lea rned a lot from our int ellec tual exchange and our f riendship. I w ould li ke to ex press
my profound appreciation to Dilşa Deniz for her challenging comments a nd valuable insights.
I am thankful to Erdal Gezik for sharing his critical comments and to Martin Greve for his
critical engagements, e ncouragements and company in the last pa rt of my fieldwork.
I am especially grateful to Kemal Ka hraman for taking me in to his world a nd thinking tog ether
with me about m y questions. W ithout our long hours of conversations, this dissertation would
not be the same. I am parti cular ly thankful to Maviş Güneşe r ; our ex change helped me a lot in
formulating m y thoughts.
I a m extremely indebted to the fun club of “ upon entering t he c it y of Dersim. ” My de ar friends
Marlene Schäfers, Armanc Yıldız , Yaara Ben g er -Alaluf, Alina Cucu, Dery a Özka ya , D aniela
Ana, Anna Danilina, L e y la S äfta- Ze cheria, Bengü A y dın, Benjamin Rassbach, Erbil Gözüaçık,
Julia S trut z, İ lk a y Yılm az shared m y jo y a nd curiosit y during m y research. Without their painful
moments of revising my chapter s, and listening to me talking about madness for long hours,
nothing would be the same. I am grateful to Esther Benger for the magic pen and Mumm y,
without them bringing m arve l in my life I would not have made it.

I am ve ry thankful to Ve li Başyiğit and Elif Kurt for their technical help. I am gra te ful also to
Café Ohne Titel for not kicking me out on the days where I had nothing more than a c offee for
eight hours straig ht, and for not asking me when I would finish the thesis.
I am extremel y grateful to Ebru Demirhan, Shannon Coone y , Kai Hammermeister and Rainer
Krell for helping me to k eep a productive dist ance from madness th roughout m y journe y . M y
family was a g r eat sourc e of support and encouragement durin g m y r esearch. I am g enuinel y
thankful to m y parents f or their cheerful and sup portive presence and to m y grandparents for
being a source of inspiration for this work.

INTRODUCTION
The people of Istanbul have benevolentl y accepted those madmen who are not ra mpant, cr iminal, or
intrusive t hanks to Islam’s co mpassionate origin. Ma ny peo ple even see i n t heir state a godly ec stasy
and have loo ked upo n the confused w o rds, strange sounds a nd cr ies they utter, as w e ll as the strange
behavior and m o veme nts with which the y co m p ort the mselves, as carr ying a meaning or c onstituting a
secret sign.

— Reşat Ekre m Koç u, Istanbu l Encyclopedia
In his unfinished Istanb ul Encyclopedia , the well -known writer and hist orian Reşat Ekrem
Koçu (1905 – 75), states that in the early 20 th century, the mad people of I stan bul were embraced
by their sane nei g hbors . Those who had “lost thei r minds, had confused minds, whose minds
were displac ed, or were craz y ” ( aklını kaybetmiş, aklını kaçırmış, aklı yerinde olmayan, çılgın )

but were not dangerous, enjoy ed the attention that I stanbulites paid them.
In his work on the character of the deli or village idiot in Turkish classical literature,
Hilmi Tezgör su gg ests t hat almost every vil lage had its deli . In his description, deli s are in
movement, visible in public space. Usuall y the y carry an object that the y are obsessed with.
Most of the times they do not speak or ini tiate communication. The y break their silence to as k
for ci g arettes. If the y disa ppear, their absence is soon noticed. People genera ll y take care o f
them, fee d and protect them. Mostl y , howev er, people mostl y ignore them noting, “no matter
what a madman does, it will be appropria te ( delid ir ne yapsa ye ridir ). ”

The disregard of the presence of the deli in public space is not onl y about a lack of
discrimination. I t is deepl y connected to the capacit y attributed to mad people to reveal the
“truth s ” that othe rs dis miss. Kemal Tahir (1910 – 73), a prominent Marxist -rea list novelist,
describes the power to reveal the truth in his novel Köyün Kamburu (The Hunchback of the
Village) as follows: “He is aware of all the dirty busi ness/sec rets in the village and will tell
them straight to the vil lagers’ face s, even thou g h nobod y accepts his know ledge. Generall y , it
is pushed aside by s a y in g he’s mad an y wa y , this is a madman. This avoidance is actuall y the
result of the fact that the words of this villag e madman concern ever y one. ”

“ Azgın, ceniyan e, tecavüzleri o lmayan delileri I stanbullular, İslamiyetin şefkatli kaynağ ından gelen duygunu n
altında gayetle hoş tutmuş, hatta halkın büyük bir kısmı onların h alinde ilah i bir cezbe görerek birbirini tutmaz
sözlerine, çıkard ıkları acaib seslere, n aralara, ga rib tavır ve hareketlerine bir ma na, bir işaret gizi diye
bakmışlardır .” Reşad Ekrem Ko çu, “Deli, Deliler”, Istan bul Ansiklop edisi , v.8, (Istanbul: Ko çu Yayınları, 1996 ),
4353.

“ Aklını kaybetmiş, a klını kaçırmış, aklı yerind e olmayan , çılgın .” Pars Tuğlacı, Okya nus Ansiklop edik Sözlük,
v.2, (Istanbul: Par s Yayınları, 19 72), 528.

Hilmi Tezgör, “ Her Kö yde En Az Bir Deli: Mod e rn Türk Öyküsünde Kö yün Delisi” in Edebiya t’ın Izind e
Delilik ve Edeb iyat , ed s. Banu Öztürk, Didem Ardalı B üyükar m an, Se val Şahin (Istanb ul: Bagla m Yayıncılık,
2017), 111 .

Ke m al T ahir, Köyü n Kamburu (Istanbul: Ithaki Yayı nları, 2010 ), 52. Cited in Hilmi Tezgör, “ Her Köyde En Az
Bir Deli,” 112.

Harmlessness is the bridge li nking madness ( delilik ) and saintliness ( velilik ) that is
expressed through a “secr et sign” in Koçu’s descripti on in the epigraph. W hile holi ness was not
attributed to ever y p erson who lost his/her mind, those who were considered to have hol y
capacities and/or wisdom were alwa y s the harmle ss ones.

For Ibn a l- ‘Arabî (1165– 1240), one
of the most prolific Sufi writers whose books bec ame “textbooks” in Ottoman medrese s
(schools),

the saintl y mad are “those who possess a mind while having lost it.”

As Michae l
W. Dols asserts in his exte nsive work on the mad man in medieval Islamic societies, different
categorie s of madness were treated differentl y in Ottoman societies. W hile those considered
dangerous were confined and put int o bimarha ne s (hospitals) st arting from the 1800s in
Istanbul, those who we re considered harmless and attributed holiness, wisdo m and/or roma ntic
character istics

continued to hang around on the streets. They w ere not only tax -exempt like
blind and maimed people

but also free from re sponsibi lity for their actions.
In Dols’ s categorization, the wise-fool was regarded as a “social critic” inspi red b y God,
narra tin g social injustice by p erf orming his intelle ct. The archet y pal wise -fool is the character
Behlül, a medieval Islamic narrative figure to wh om were attributed many stories and jok es.
The source of his wisdom was his stance agai nst irreligion.

Another cate g or y is of the
romantic fool, one who is lost in prof ane love. Th e archetype of the romantic fool is Mecnun i n
the popular stor y of L e y l a and Mecnun, where he is driven crazy b y his “passionate but chaste
love for Ley la”

and ultim ately s acrifices himself for love.

While Mecnun loses himself in
his love for Le y la, the character of the hol y - fool reaches vuslat or unification with God. Thanks
to the spontaneous illumination granted to him independently from his own will , he is able to
perform miracles.

The saintliness of mad people in the Ottoman/Turkish context has been expressed
through different concepts such as mecnûn , meczûb and dîvâne . Mecnûn literally means the one

Fatih Artvinli, Delilik, Siyaset ve Toplum: Toptaşı Bimerhanesi (1873 -19 27) (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Universites i
Yayınevi, 2013 ), 24 - 25.

Ateş, A., “Ibn al - ʿArabī”, in: E ncy clopaed ia of Islam, Second Ed ition, eds. P. B earm a n, Th. B ianquis , C.E.
Bos w or th, E. van Donzel, W.P . Heinrichs. Consulted o nline on 02 July 2 019.

İbnü’l -Arabi, Fü tühat- ı Mek kiye (Istanbul: Litera Ya yıncılık, 2 006), 58 1.

Michael W.Do ls & Diana E. Immisch, Majnū n : The Mad m an in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford : Ne w
York: Clarendon Pr ess ; Oxford Univers ity Press, 1992) , 12 - 13.

Ed., “Maḥalle”, in : Encyclopaed ia of Islam, Second Editio n, eds. P. B earm a n, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bos w or th, E.
van Donzel, W .P. Heinrichs. Cons ulted online on 02 J uly 2 019.

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn . 349- 366.

Michael W.Do ls & Diana E. Immisch, Majnū n : The Madman in Medieva l Islamic Society (Oxford : Ne w
York: Clarendon Pr ess ; Oxford Univers ity Press, 1992) , 12.

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn . 313- 320.

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn . 388- 410

who is possessed b y jinn.

The notion o f Mecnun, possesse d by his love for L e y la as
repre sentative of pure lo ve was reworked in Tur kish poetry and Mecnun also appeared as a
“sy mbol of the m ystic […] all -consuming love of God. ”

Meczûb means t he one who “ cezbe
tutulmuş ,”

who is outside normal b ehavioral patterns and turns inwards. I t refe rs to those who
“are obs essed with divine love”

and unwillingly achieve a level of devotional wisdom that
they are not able to tea ch to those around them.

Whereas the wo rds meczub and mecnun com e
from Arabic, dîvân e has Persian roots and literall y means mad. Dîvân e is used b y Ibn S ina
(c.980 – 1037), a Persian writer widel y known for his books on medicine and healing, to refer to
types o f madness ( enva -i divânelik ler ) including “m ania, rabies, be stial madness and
lycanthropy” which were all characterized b y “agg ressive behavior . ”

However the meanin g
of a ggre ssi ve behavior changed in m y sti c al interpretations of Islam such as the tasavvufi context
in which dîvâne indicates the one who is struc k b y divine love.

Th is dissertation focuse s on the life stor y of a hol y-madman who bri ngs together
differe nt characteristics of unconfined madness: w isdom, holiness and romanticism and places
it within the unique history and cultural context of a spe cific settin g. This is the stor y of first
madman of Turke y to be memorialized with a sta tue: Hüseyin Tatar (1930 – 94) from Dersim,
one of the most popular and be st-known mad figures of Turkey. Throug h an exploration of the
memorialization, sacralization and politicization of madness in the case o f Ş ey w uşen , as he w as
locally known, this stud y ex plores the relationship betwee n the politi ca l and spiritual spheres
in the heavil y militarized and politicall y contested landscape of the region of his birth, life and
death: Dersim. Throu g h the biograph y of Şe y wuşen, it revisits the political history of De rsim
(toda y officiall y known as Tunceli), the onl y cit y i n Turke y where the Kurdi sh-Alevi population
forms a majorit y. Tracing his life stor y allows us to reassess the historical events that became
landmarks in the collective memory of the contested landscape of Der sim: genoc idal violence
in 1915 and in 1938, the c oup d’état of 1980 and violent clashes between the Kurdish movement
and the Turkish Armed F orces in the 1990s. Using historical and et hnog raphic material
collected in Dersim, along with ora l history int ervi ews condu cted with members of the D ersim

Welch, A.T ., “ Ma d
 j
 nūn ”, i n: Encyclopaedia o f Islam, Second Edition, ed s. P. B earm a n, Th. Bianquis, C.E.
Bos w or th, E. van Donzel, W.P . Heinrichs. Consulted o nline on 02 July 2 019

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn , 12.

Sevan Nişan y a n, “meczub “ in Nişanyan Sö zlük : Çağdaş Türkçe’ nin Etimolojisi , available online:
https://www. nis an yansozluk.co m/?k=meczub

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn , 418.

Artvinli, Delilik, S iyaset ve To plum , 25.

Dols & I mm i sch. Ma jnūn , 101.

“ İlâhî aşkın etkisiyle h ayrete düşen , şaşırıp kalan anla mında bir tasavv uf terimi . ”
https://islamansi klopedisi.org.tr /divane

diaspora living in German y , th e stud y unp acks how the identit y of Şe y wuş en as holy -mad was
constructed as a metaphor of the injur y caused by racialized and se cularized state violence.
Şeywuşen’s life stor y pr ovides a p rivileged site for an aly zin g how subjects have been formed
by Turke y ’ s state secularism, the bounda ries of which are drawn through medi calization,
secularization, racialization and ph y sical state vi olence in the contex t of an ethnically and
relig iousl y diverse landscape.
Presentati on of the case
Reflecting the political tensions of the reg ion he lived in, almost every thin g about Şe y wuşen’s
life stor y — including his name — is contested. While his officia l name was Hüse y in Tatar, he
was c alled, variousl y , Şe y w uşen , Sewuşen , Se y usen or Se y it Hüs ey in. Nurettin Aslan in his
book Madmen of Dersim describes ho w Hüse y in Tatar be came Sewuşen: “ I t is not known if it
is a custom of Dersimis or it is the case because we [Dersimis] cannot accept the Turkified
names but we do not ca ll any on e with their official names. We say Fate for Fatma, Ele for Elif,
Memo for M ehmet, Heso for Hasan, and Uso for Hüse yin. Uso be came first Uşen then
Şewuşen, and the nam e remained as such . ”

Aslan refers here to a broader p olicy of Turkif y in g
the proper names of places and people in the Kır mancki (also known as Za zaki), Kurmanci,
Greek and Armenian languages from the early republican period onwards. As a result of this
process, Turkified offici al names have also come into ev eryday use. Th is is how different
interpellations of the same person, c it y and geographical refere nce appear.
Although officiall y called Tunceli (Turkish, meaning “bronze hand ” ) sin ce 1935, the
province that Şe y wuş en came from is widely referred to b y its hist orica l name, Dersim. Since
the incorpora tion of Dersim into the Turkish national landscape through genocidal violence in
1937 –38, the name Tun celi is a contested one. Şeywuşen was born in 1930, between two
catastrophe s that funda m entally re-sh aped the reg i on : the Armenian G enocide (1915 – 17)

and
the Dersim Genocide (1937 – 38). Whil e the rest of the population of what became Turkey is
predominantly Sunni M uslim-Turkish since the Armenian Genocide in 191 5 – 17 and the
population exchange between Gr eece and Turkey in 1923, Dersim remains the only c it y where
the Kurdish-Alevi popul ation forms a majorit y . The ethnic and religious cha racteristics of th e
region have been define d through difference from the majority , who co mpris ed Ottoman
subjects and, later, the Tu rkish nation. As is apparent from the multi ple names of both Şeywuşe n

Nurettin A slan, Der sim’in Diva ne Delileri ( İstanbul: İletisim Ya yın ları, 201 5), 12.

There is no concensus on the per iodization of the Ar m e nian Genocid e, see “Ar menian Genocide ( 1915 -
1923),” accessed September 16, 2 020, https://www.armenian - genocide.or g/g enocid e.html.

and Dersim, the r egion is extremely contested due to its long hist ory of state violence. Althou g h
officially part of eastern Turkey, it occupies differ ent national and religious imaginaries. Dersim
is considered a part of western Armenia b y Armenian nationalists and a part of Turkish
Kurdistan b y the Kurdis h movement. In addition, it is the ancestral home of Alevi teachings
among Kurdish-Alevis.

Şeywuşen descend ed fro m the Kuresan hol y lin eag e

which is believed to derive from
the lineage of the prophet Muhammed and is, in socio -political terms, one of t he most influential
tribes of Dersim. There i s no consensus on the time or reason for his “madness” amon g my
interlocutors. His re latives put for ward either his ex perienc e of mandatory military service or a
troubled love relationship as the reason for Şeywuşen’s “madness . ” However, others who knew
him associated his “madne ss” with various incidents of state-sponsore d violence. I ndeed, m y
interlocutors narrated ev ery inciden t of stat e violence marked in the col lective memor y of
Dersim — the Armenian Genocide, the De rsim Genocide and the coup of 1980 — as the reason
for Şeywuşen’s “madne ss . ”
After completing mandator y militar y s ervice in the mi d-19 60s, Şe y wuşen l eft his two
children and wife in Beydamı village and c ame to Dersim cit y center. That was th e b eginning
of his life as a public figure, one whom people both laughed at and to ok care of. I n m y
interlocutors’ memories of the 1960s a nd 1970s Ş ey wuşen mostl y appears as a “fun” c haracter
who took people’s food without asking permissio n, smok ed more than on e ci ga rette at a time
and liv ed on the streets in the center of Dersim. In the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’ét at ,
however, a significant sh ift occurred in the percepti on of Ş eywuşe n. There are two narratives
explaining this change. Some sa id that his saintliness was revealed in an encounter with police
officers durin g the curfew following th e coup. When Şe y wuş en could not see anyone on the
streets he approached poli ce officers to ask th em if what w as going on was a repla y o f the
Dersim Genocide in 1938 . The abilit y to “ flash ” a historical moment in the prese nt in times of
crisis

was considered a sa intly behavior, of voicing what is considered the truth at a time when

Alevis constitute ro ughly 15% o f the pop ulation of Turke y. While tw o -thirds o f Alevis in T urkey speak
Turkish the rest spea k the Kurmanci o r Kir m anc ki dialects of the K urdish language. Mar kus Dressler, " Religio -
secular meta m o rphoses: T he re- mak ing o f Turkish Alevism." Journal of the America n Academy o f Religion 76,
no. 2 (2 008): 280 -311, 281.

Kuresan is one of the most i m p ortant seyyid families in the r egion. Religious lead ers from this hol y li neage in
Dersim ha ve disciples in a w ide area including east Dersim, Var to- Hı nıs , Erzinca n, Adıyaman a nd E rzurum . Erdal
Gezik, Hüse yin Çakmak, Raa Haqi – Riya Haqi : Dersim Aleviliği İ nanç Terimleri Sö zlüğü, (Ank ara: Kala n
Yayınları, 20 10), 109 -111.

See the interpr etation of Benja m i n’s thesis IV in Mic hael Lö wy . Fire alarm: Read ing Walter Benjamin's On
the con cept of history ( London, New York: Verso, 2 005). 42 - 46.

opposition had been sil ence d throu gh the use of brutal state violence. The second narrative
proposes that the shift in the perception of Şeywuşen related to his prophecies and mi rac les.
According to this narrative, the inhabitants of De rsim started perceiving Ş eywuşen as a hol y -
madman when his pre dic tions materialized and his warnings protec t ed people from danger.
Th is transition, from a homeless madman int o a hol y-madma n, happened in the
afterma th of the 1980 coup d’état when a massive leftist mobilization was brutally suppr essed.
It was a period when “critique was a central, common and ordinary mod e of relating to the
state” and people of different political pe rsuasions were “involved in criticizing va rious
manifestations of th e st ate in the most sophisticated manner.”

The 1980 coup created
nationwide unease b y officiall y proclaiming Turki sh and Sunni Muslim identit y to be th e glue
keeping the nation to g ether, and le gitimiz ing extreme stat e viol ence to silence critical voice s .
After the coup, le ftwing and r evolutionary mobilization was violently er ased in the whole
country a s well as in Dersim. During the 1990s, poli tical circles critical of the established order
began to be domi nated by the struggle for equ al ri ght s on the part of Al evis and th e armed
struggle initiated b y the P artiy a K arkerê n Kurdista nê ( PKK, Kurdistan Workers’ Pa rty )

in
Dersim.
Around this ti me, Şeywuşen’s photos started to be sold at the w edding ceremonies of
Dersimi migrant communities in Europe and he appeared in dreams tha t were considered
visionary or therapeutic. Severa l keramet s, marvels performed b y saint ly people,

were
attributed to him in this period.

Yael Navaro -Yashin, Faces of t he state: S ecularism and pu blic life in Tu rkey ( Princeton University P ress,
2002),4 .

T he PKK is a radical Kurdish p olitical organization in volved in an armed struggle a gainst the T urkish state
since 1984. Its m o bilization i n Dersim started later than th e r est of the Kurdish regio n of Turkey in the 19 90s.

Gardet, L., “Karāma”, in: En cyclopaedia of Islam , Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, T h. B ianquis, C.E.
Bos w or th, E. va n Do nzel, W.P . Heinrichs. C onsulted onli ne on 1 0 J anu ar y 20 19 ;
https://www. nis an yansozluk.co m/?k=keramet

Figure 1: A souvenir from Dersim: A photo of Şeywuşen sold at Dersimi wedding ceremonies in Eur o p e
In 1994, Şe y w uşen was murdered by a high-scho ol mathematics tea cher while he wa s sleeping
in his usual spot. The reason for the murd er was n arra ted diff ere ntl y b y v arious interlocutors.
S ome put forward the “ mental instabilit y ” of the mathematics teacher ; some said that Turkish
Armed Forces w ere inv olved in the killing because Şeywuşen possess ed secret knowled ge.
Şeywuşen’s funeral was describe d as one o f the most crowded funerals in De rsim during the
1990s. A y ear afte r his d eath the municipalit y , governed b y the Sos ya ldemokrat Halkçı P art i

(SHP, Social Democr atic Populi st Party), erected his statue in the city center . It stood on the
street parallel to where the statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the “founding father” of the
Turkish nation, is situated. While a statue of this sort, as an aesthetic form, is widel y regarded
in academic literature as an instrument to fix a certain historical int erpretation , the statue of
Şeywuşen “fails” at forging a unitary biogra phi cal narration. I nste ad, it opens up ground to tell
stories, ranging f rom th at var y from loss of genocidal violence to stories about Şeywuşe n’s hol y
capacities.
This dissertation traces the genealogies of disc ourses and practices sh aped around
madness as observed in ever y da y life in contemporar y Dersim. W hile Şe y wuş en’s photos
continue to oc cupy public and private places both inside and outside Dersim, a number of we ll -

T he Cumhuriyet Halk P artisi (CHP, Rep ublican P eople’s Par ty) alo ng with ot her p olitical par ties was banned
after the co up d’état o f 1980 . SHP w as founded as a result o f “a major split among the ranks of the social de m o crats
after the ret urn o f the elec toral co mpetition i n 198 3. By receiving 24 .8 % of the vote in t he 198 7 elections SHP
became the m ai n opp osition party. In 1990 SHP became a full m e m ber of th e Socialist Intern atio nal. In 1995 SHP
unified with refor med CHP. Dochert y , Ja mes C. & Peter Lam b. 2 006. Historical Dictionary of So cialism , Oxford:
Scarecro w P ress, pp : 289 ; Ayata, Sencer & Ayşe - Güneş Ayat a. 2007 . “T he Center - Left P arties in Turke y ”, Tu rkish
Studies 8/2:2 11 -232. pp:212.

known madmen sti ll inhabit the cit y toda y . While Kar Y ağsın Ibo (Let - It-Snow Ibo)

is well-
known for his wish it would snow, even in spring and summ er, R ady o Hıdır (Radio Hıdır) hangs
out with a radio in hand, and General Zey nk knock ed on people’s doors for political campaigns
during the 2018 general elections in favor of the pro -Kurdish Halkların Demokratik Partisi
(HDP, People’s De mocrati c P arty ) .

Whil e such character s, somewhere between a vil lage idiot
and a wise-fool, still e xist in Dersim, the stories att ributed to Şe y wuşen specifically are dist inct
by be ing at the crossroad s of wise, holy and romantic madm en.
Bringing into conversation the li terature on stat e violence, politics of emo tions, space
and secularism this dissertation conceptualizes hol y-madness as a site where the brutall y
silenced past haunts the present in creative wa y s that allow bounded temporal ities to be
transcended and different identit y claims to be constructed. I t proposes that tracing the politi cal
connotations of holy-madness not onl y deconstruct s the notion of irrationality , it also challenges
the limi ts of what can be articulated in the realm of poli tics. Analy z ing the ways in which
Şeywuşen has be en memorialized and sacralized , this dissertation explores the particular
experience of the poli tical in a region that has been pathologized and labelled a s “irrational” b y
diverse political actors th roug hout th e late Ottoman period and the histor y of modern Turke y .
To do so, it proposes a process wh ereby Dersim becomes the constitutive other of the n ation.
Throug h a gendered anal y sis of the narrated r easons for Ş eywuşe n’s madness, it frames the
formation of the hol y -m ad identit y as the process of affliction of oth erness that has been
attributed to the region. Looking at rituals and p ractice s woven around h oly-mad fi gure s, it
conceptualizes hol y-madness as a creative site that allows open -ended morning for the
illegitimate loss of Dersim. Finall y , in analyzing the inauguration of the statue of Şeywuşen in
the political atmosphere of the 1990s, it il lustrates the limits of heroic and militarist
repre sentation in the Tur kish public sphere .
By interrogating what hol y - madness in Dersim entails, this dissertation aims to shift our
attention from the pathologi zing terminolog y th at is instrumentally use d in the politics of
recognition, to de-p atholog ized madness which carries a different political potential.
Undeniably, the lan guag e of trauma has been successfully used in the struggles for Kurdish and
Alevi rights and has brought worldwide visibilit y t o those movements. Attempting to see what
is be y ond the politicall y conducive, the focus on hol y-madness helps us gr asp the limits of the

Caner can, DERSİ MLİ İbo Ile Sohp et ( Dersim) :) , accessed July 10, 20 19,
https://www. y o utube.co m/watch?v=VEIT 0_y 2Y0Q.

Welg Med ya Haber, Dersimd e General Zen g 24 Haziran S eçimlerini Değerlendiriyor , acc essed July 10, 2 019,
https://www. y o utube.co m/watch?v=kg_T e8nA8Y4.

existing politi ca l language, and calls for a political imagination whose borders are not drawn
by secular truth re g imes.
What then could a poli tical imagination which cannot be translated into concre te
demands of recognition tell us? This dissertation arg u es that looki ng at holy-madness gives us
the c hance to engage with the spiritual cosmology of Dersim as an inherent pa rt of the political
sphere. While the trope of madness allows the c ollection of life stories, fantasies about th e
region and truth claims in liberal way s, holiness il lustrates how those na rratives are sublim ated
into a sacred capacity that is potent in reg ulating everyda y lif e. Firstly, the hist orica l
ethnography of hol y-madness in Dersim puts fo rward the w ays in which the experience of
racialized and secularized state violence is inscribed in the sense of the political. Secondl y , it
illustrates the tangled relationship betwee n the injur y caused by state violence and stra tegies of
political resilience. Lastl y , it of fers an unboun ded underst anding of t he poli tical which
challenge s th e limits of what can be articulated within the re alm of politi cs, t hrough an emphasis
on what cannot be instrumentaliz ed by poli tical or soc ial movements.
Conceptua l fram ework
Production of knowledge
To frame the epistemic violence ex erc ised in the region as a fo rm of state vi olence, I turn to the
literature on the producti on of kno wledge. Since the Marxist int erve ntion i n hist oriog raph y , the
process o f knowledge pr oduction which was once taken for granted has be come questionable.
What we know and how we a cquire know ledge ar e widel y discussed questions in the context
of the r eproduc tion o f existing socioe conomic s ystems. Marxist and Marxian scholars approach
this theme through the lens of class anal y sis. W hile some prefer to work with the notion of
ideology

to ex plore the reproduc tion of the conditions of unequal/unjust production, others
hold on to the idea of hegemon y .

Both approac hes are invest ed in revealing the fictiv e
repre sentation of the world that has been produced b y and serves th e exploitative classe s.
Shifting the foc us from the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor to the
notion of power as it spreads throughout the societ y , Foucault proposes that “[p]ower must be
analy zed as something that circulates, […] [it] is emplo y ed and ex erc ised through a net -like

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Id eological State Appar atuses” in Mappin g Ideology, ed. Slavoj Zizek
(London and Ne w York: Ver so, 1 994), pp.100 -140.

Antonio Gra msci, Quintin. Hoare, and Geoffrey. Nowell -Smit h. Selections from th e Prison Notebooks of
Antonio Gramsci (Ne w York: Internatio nal Publishers, 197 1), 365.

organization.”

I n his approach, powe r is not uniquely restrictive. It is not stored or achieve d
but instead performed an d negotiated. Through its performances, subj ec ti vities are produced
and reproduc ed.

Foucault analy zes this diffused notion of power throu g h instit utions. Our
conceptions of knowledge (on normality and abnormality, sanity and madness and the like) are
shaped and circulated b y institutional structures that potent ly pr escribe regimes of truth.

In
other words, kno wledge production as a process is embedded in power stru gg les and produ cing
knowledge is also a claim to power.

“The subje ct w ho knows, the objects to be known and th e
modalities of knowledge must be r egarded as so man y effects of fund amental implications of
power- knowledge and th eir historical transformations.” In thi s sense, it is n ot the activit y o f the
subject of knowledge th at “produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but
power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it, and of which it is made up, that
determines the f orms and possible domains of knowledge .“

In the ca se of Dersim, the limits of the possible domain of knowledge w ere drawn b y
colonial c uriosities. “ Curiosit y ” about the region dates ba ck to the Tanzimat Period (1839 – 76)
when the Ottoman government felt the need to “forcibly induct supposedl y recalcitrant
peripherie s into an a g e o f modernit y .”

The production of knowledge expanded as a p art of
statecraft and in establishing the state’s monopoly on violenc e in th e region. To cultivate the
legitimate b asis for the state’s civilizing interventions, the central authoritie s of the empire and,
later, the Turkish Republic appointed scientists and state officials to write reports on the
fantasiz ed “sava g e” and “ primitive” inhabitants o f Dersim. These reports have be en dominated
by tropes that were commonplace in the anthropological knowledge production of the l ate 19 th
and earl y 20 th centuries, when anthropolog y s erved as the handmaiden of colonialism.

Although the discipl ine has changed to a certain extent through constant self-critique, these
arche t y p es persist in many a nthropological accounts today .

The most incisive critique of such
arche t y p es has come from the anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot who argues that

Michel Foucault, Colin. Gordon. Power/knowled ge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1 972 -1977 .
(Ne w Yor k: Pantheon Boo ks, 1980), 98.

Judith Butler, Bodies that Ma tter: On the Discu rsive Limits of S ex (London: Routledge. 19 93).

Foucault, Powe r/knowledge .

Michel Foucault, Discipline an d Punish: The B irth of the Prison (Har m o ndsworth:Peng uin, 1991) , 27 - 28.

Ussama Makdisi. “Rethinking Otto man Imper ialism: Modernity, Vio lence and the Cultura l Logic of Otto m an
Reform” in The Emp ire in the City: Arab Provin cial Capitals in the Ottoman E mpire , eds. Jens Hanssen,
Thomas Philipp , and Stefan W eber (Beirut/Würzburg: Ori ent -Institut der Deutschen Morgenländisc hen
Gesellschaft, 2 002), 30.

Diane Lewis, “Anthropolog y and Colonialism,” Current An thropo logy 14, no. 5 (1973): 581 – 602.

Akhil Gupta a nd James Ferguson, “Discipli ne and Practice: ‘T he Field’ as Site, Met hod, and Location in
Anthro po logy,” in Anthropolo gy Locatio ns , ed s. Ak hil Gupta and James Ferguson (B erkeley: University of
California Press, 1 997).

ethnography has been w orking throu gh the tropes of the “savage slot,” the discursive gap that
can be filled with the object of stud y ; and “elsewhere , ” the geographical location of these
“savage s” away from “civilization.”

Sim ilarly , kn owledge production on Dersim in the earl y
20 th century has been built upon recurr ing themes: barbarism, savagery, remoteness,
ge ographical inaccessibilit y , Kurdification/Zazaification of a “Turkish” population, religious
deviancy a nd ignorance.

Depicting the inhabitants of Dersim as a “backward people without history ”

and th e
region as an “unrul y landscape”

the central government of the earl y republican period im plied
that governing pow er in the region was inconsis tent and random. The ir “proven” inferiorit y
justified the central authorities’ demonstration o f their sup erior it y and m odern, p rogressive
character . In this sense, the language used b y th e state to make Dersim as the other

of the
modern Turkish state was not different from the discourse s of other colonial powers and
justified the imposi tion of a supposedl y civili zed, rational and consistent order on the region.
Throug h repetiti on in the knowledge that was produced about the region, t he labels of la cking
civility and authorit y became “sti cky signs”

describing Dersim. In other words, uttering the
name Dersim became sufficient to generate the discomfort a ttached to barbarism, savage r y and
relig ious d eviancy. This association continues today to a c ertain ex tent, and operates b y m aking
one version of truth and h istory more p rominent than an other. The suc cess of these associations,
or the stickiness of these signs of “backwardness,” is “dependent on past hist ories of association
that often ‘work’ through concealment.”

As in other colonial cont exts, Ottom an and, later, Turkish colonial pr actices targeting
Dersim involved both “a gender and a racial dispossession . ”

The knowledge of Dersim as a
place devoid of culture or history tr anslated it, in patriarchal state narratives, int o a “ virgin ”
territory, a “void of sexual agency, passivel y a waiting the thrusting m ale insemination of

Michel- Rolph T rouillot, “Anthrop ology and the Savage Slot : The Poetics and P olitics of Otherness,” in Glo bal
Tr ansf o rmations (Ne w York: P algrave Macmillan, 2003) , 7 – 28.

Hasan Reşit T ankut, Zazalar Üzerine Sosyolojik Tetkikler (Kala n Basım Yayın Da ğıtım, 200 0). ) ; Ziy a Gökalp,
Kürt aşiretleri ha kkında so syolojik tetkikler ( İstanbul: Kayna k Yayınları, 201 1).

Eric R. W olf, Europe an d the Peop le W ithout History ( Berkeley: Universit y o f Califor nia Pr ess, 2010).

Trouillot, Global Transforma tions , 7 – 28.

Özlem Göner, “A Social H istory of Power and Struggle in Turk ey: State, Memory, Movem ents, and Identit y of
Outsiderness in D ersim”, unpu blished PhD thesis submitt ed to t he Sociology Departmen t o f the University of
Massachusett s, 2012.

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Po litics of Emotion (Ed inburgh: Edinburgh U niv er sity Press, 2 004 ).

Ahmed, Th e Cultural Politics of Emotion , 13 .

Anne McClintock, Imperial Lea ther: Race , Gender, and Sexuality in the Colon ial Contest (Ne w York 199 5),
30.

history, language and reason . ”

To grasp the resilie nce of this discourse surrounding the region,
the first sentence of the book published by th e di strict g overnorship of Tunceli as r ecent ly as
2012 is instructive : “Tunceli is a true Anatolian trea sure hidden amongst steep mountain slopes.
With its splendid beauty, its myths each carr y ing another lesson as well as its hist ory , Tun celi
is a real se cre t cit y , undi scovere d until toda y . I t i s social dut y to make Tunceli — a cit y honest
and passionate about its soil and freedom —more widel y known. ”

Dersim remains tod ay a
void, awaiting discovery.
State violence, emotion and subjectivity
To elaborate on identity formation as a hol y-mad figure I en gage with the literature on
subjectivity in relation to state violence . The classical literature tends to focus on the
monopolization of violence in the establishment of nation-states and marks this historic process
as the start of a gradual decrease in violence.

This view disregards the role of violence in the
formation of modern nati ons and also obscures the transform ation and infliction of violence in
everyday life.

Critical literature on the state, on th e other hand, goes against this argument of
“gradua l decline” b y exposing the paradox of legitimacy claimed based o n the monopol y of
violence, the rule of law and atrocities against po pulations in the name of enduring so cial and
national peace.

Feminist int erve ntions to the literature on state and viol enc e emphasize that
what stimulates gendere d violence is the definition of the state as a masculine entity

where
the experience of violence (b y d y in g for the n ation), or giving life to th e n ation “becomes part
of the subject’s a ttachment t o the modern sta te . ”

Dying for the nation, or other militarist attachments to the state p roduce a gendered
citizenship which directl y influ ences subjectivities. On the on e h and, because women are not
allowed to do military s ervice in Turkey, the y are not able to participate in the masculinist my th
of the military n ation myth which enables Turkish men to take pride in b eing men and thus able

McClintock, I mperial Leather, 30.

“ Tunceli sarp da ğların arasına saklanmış gerçek b ir Anadol u hazinesid ir. Olağanüstü gü z ellikleri, her biri
ayrı derslerle dolu efsaneleri, tarihsel geç mişiyle Tunceli, bu güne kada r keşfedilmemiş gerçek bir saklı kenttir.
Özü sözü bir, to prağına ve özg ürlüğün e düşkün Tunceli’n in bilinir hale gelmesi to plumsal bir g örev
niteliğind edir .” Tunceli Valisi Mustafa Taşkesen, “Takdim”, in Bir Tutam Tu nceli, ed . Yüksel Isik (Ankara: Anit
Matbaa, 2 012) 6.

Max Weber , “Politics as a Vocation”, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociolo gy (Oxford, 1946), 78.

Fernando Coro nil and J ulie Skurski, eds., States of Violen ce , T he Com parati ve Studies in Societ y and Hi story
Boo k Series (Ann Arbor: University of Mic higan Press, 200 6), 2.

T alal As ad, F ormations of th e Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity . Stan ford (CA: Stanford Uni v. P ress,
2003).

MacKinnon C. To ward a F eminist Theory of th e State (Cambridge, M A: Harvard Univ. P ress, 1991).

Veena Das. " Violence, gender, and subjectivity." Annu al Review of Anthrop ology 37 (2008): 283 -299, 285.

to join the army.

Emotions such as pride are not “ merel y ” emotions, as Sara Ahmed tells us;
they line up bodies. Through circulation of emotions the subj ec ts, bodies, groups and social
relations materialize.

Instead of understanding emotions as residin g in the subject o r being
“about” its object, Ahmed conceptualizes them as continuous process es , in t he course of which
the surface of individual and communal bodies is produced. Emotions “ work to align some
subjects with some others and against others.”

While circulating “be tween bodies and
signs, ”

they “stick” certain signs to obje cts. In some case s th e circulation of af fec ts and
emotions makes communities, as when taking p ride in joining the army. In oth er case s, the y
work to inflict injury . Th e obstruc tion of public grie f, for instance , becomes inj ury for Kurdish
guerrillas who fig ht ag ainst the Turkish mi litary , pre cisel y because their b odies do not align. I n
Dersim, wh ere the continuit y of state-sponsored vi olence still dominates the political landscape,
this form of violence cannot onl y be regarded as destructive. Throu gh the creation of injuries,
sticky signs and a lignments, i t g enerates subjectivities, emotions, affec ts and communities.
This dissertation is mostly conc erned with the emo tional and affective d y na mics that state
violence generates.

I n other words, it focus es on what state viol ence produces while
destroy ing lifeworlds. To grasp “state violence” a s a reference point in making sense of
everyday lif e in Dersim , I turn to Veena Das who ar g ues that violence cannot be rega rded as a
solely d estructive force interrupting ordinar y life. Conceptualizing violen ce as a cultural and
social force producing the ordinar y

helps us to go b eyond simplisti c interpretations where
violence is understood a s “a tool wielded in the pursuit of po wer.”

I n d oing so, I aim to
complicate the idea of political violence as “the brute physica l force that ruptures the flow of
everyday life.”

I n the absence of an official reco gnition of state crimes and the continuity of
state violence, the case of Dersim shows the need to revisit the notion of “violent rupture and
the routine maintenance of or der.”

I n a place where “rupture” is so consistent, the “ordina r y ”
loses its place. Unhinging the dichotom y between violent rupture and the ordinary, the

Ayse Gül Altına y, The Myth of th e Military-Natio n: Militarism, Gen der, and Education in Turkey (Ne w Yo rk:
Palgrave Mac m illan, 200 6).

Ahmed, Th e Cultural Pol itics of Emo tion .

Ahmed, Th e Cultural Politics of Emotion 11.

Ahmed, Th e Cultural Politics of Emotion 117.

Begona Aretxa ga. States of te rror: Begona Aretxaga’s Essays. ed. Z ulaika, Jo seba (Nevada: Uni versity of
Nevada Re no, Basque Studies Program, 20 05) . Yael Navaro-Yashin, Th e Make-Believe Space: Affective
Geograp hy in a Postwar Polity (Durha m, NC: Duke Univer sity Press, 2 012). Vee na Das. Life and Words:
Violence and the Descent in to the Ordina ry (Univ of Cali fornia Press, 2006 ).

Veena Das, Life an d Words: Violen ce and the Descen t into the Ordina ry (Univ of California P ress, 2006) .

Coronil and S ku rski, States of Violence , 2.

Coronil and S ku rski, 2.

Coronil and S ku rski, States of Violence , 2.

experience of violence becomes constituti ve of the ordinary. In that sense, a historical
ethnography of Dersim can onl y be written against the well-established understanding o f the
“gradua l elimination or containment of violence through the state’s monopolization of the
regularization and org anization of civil societ y .”

The focus on the destructive power of state violence and the prac tice of documenting the
loss of Dersim developed hand in hand with the search for justice, compensation and
reconc iliation.

W hat is crucial for m y discussi on on state viol enc e is its power on th e
formation of subjectivities. In this sense, m y approach is differe nt from the tendency to reduce
the state to its monopoly on violence and destro y in g both human and non -human actors.

Instead of seein g the state as a tangible social inst itution or a “statel y persona,” I aim to an aly ze
it in “the sites of ever y d ay life, where people attempt to produce meaning for themselves b y
appropriating the political.”

I take state violence itself as transformative, and as constructing
and rec onstructing subjecti vities.

This approach c ontributes to m y analysis on the production
of other ness in Dersim through knowledge production and helps me explain the proc ess of the
affliction of otherness in Dersim, where communal attac hment is strongly linked to a way of
making sense of state violence.
To clarif y what I mean b y “ affliction ” I tu rn to J udith Butler’s theorizati on of subject
formation. Expanding o n Althusser’s notion of interpellation which suggests th at state
constitutes individuals as subjects b y interpellating them,

Butler complicates this framing b y
suggesting that the search for recognition is not only the result of submission out of fea r but it
also generates a desirous attachment towards authority . The desire to be recognized is at the
core o f investm ent in a h egemonic pow er structur e.

In the Butlerian frame of subjectivation,
injury pla y s a ke y role. I n jur y is wha t the subject is unavoidabl y attached to in order to socially

Coronil and S ku rski, States of Violence , 2.

Hüseyin Aygün , De rsim 1938 resmiyet ve hakikat , (Ankara: Dipnot, 2010 ); Hüseyin Aygü n, Ders im 1938 ve
Zorunlu I skân: Telgraflar, Dil ekçeler, Mektup lar , (Dipnot Yayınları, 20 09); İsmail Beşikçi, Tunceli Kan unu
(1935) ve Dersim jeno sidi , (İst anbul: İsmail Beşi kçi Vakfı Y ayınları, 2013 ); Özgür Fındık , Kara Vag on: Dersim-
Kırım ve Sü rgün , (İstanbul: Fam, 2 012); Mesut Özcan, Darb e yıllarında Dersim , (İstanb ul: Doğan Kitap, 20 17);
Cemal T aş, Dağların kayıp anahtarı : Dersim 1938 anlatıları , (İletişim Yayınları 2 010); Bülent B ilm ez, G ülay
Kayacan, and Şükrü Aslan, B elleklerdeki Dersim ’3 8 , ( İstanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Ya yınları, 20 15); Faik Bulut,
Dersim rap orları: Inceleme , (İstanbul: Evrensel Bası m Yayın, 20 05); Taha B a ran, 19 37- 1938 Yılları Arasınd a
Bası nda Dersim , (İstanbul: İletişi m, 2014).

Giorgio Aga m b en. Ho mo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. (Stan ford: Stanford Universit y Press, 19 98).

Yael Navaro -Yashin, Faces of th e State: S ecularism and Public Life in Turkey (Princeton, 20 02), 135.

M ichelle Fo ucault, „Governmentalit y“. In Fo ucault Effect: studies in governmenta lity (eds) G. Burchill, C.
Gordo n 8. P. Miller, 87 - 104. (Ch icago: U niversity of Chica go Pr ess, 1991). Stuart Hall, „Who Need s Identity“ in
The Iden tity Reader . Ed s. Paul Du Ga y , Jessica E vans &P eter Redman. (Sage, 20 00).

Louis Althusser. “Ideology and Id eological State Apparatuses” in Ma pping Id eology , ed. Slavoj Zizek,
(London and Ne w York: Ver so, 1 994), 129.

Judith Butler. The Psychic Lif e of Power: Theo ries in Subjection. (Stanf ord: Stan ford University P ress, 1997).

constitute itself. I n other words, injuries mark the foundation of one’s id entity. What further
complicates this proce ss of subject for mation is that when one oppos es the injury, s/he opposes
what is at the core of her/his identity :
Called b y an i njurious name, I co me i nto social being, a nd bec ause I ha ve a ce rtain in evitable
attachment to existe nce, becau se a certain narcis sism ta kes ho ld o f any ter m that confers e xistence,
I am led to embrace the ter ms that injure me b ecause the y constitute m e sociall y. As a further
parad ox, then, onl y b y occup ying – b eing occupied b y – that injurious ter m ca n I resist a nd op pose
it, recasting t he p ower that c onstitutes me as the p ower I o ppose. […] An y mobilization agai nst
subjection w il l take su bjec tion as its resource, and that attachment to an inj urious interpellatio n w il l,
by way o f a neces sary alie nated narcissism, beco me the condition under which resignify ing that
interpellation beco mes possible.

In the absence of Şe y wu şen’s own attachment to specific in cidents of pol itical violence, his
madness becomes associated with diverse episodes of state-sponsored violence. In other words,
while he was not sociall y performing an y injur y , the narratives abo ut his madness suggest that
he “lost it” during the process of being interpe llated b y the state with the purpose of governing
the difference loc ated in Dersim. In this case, Ş eywuşen’s refusal to hol d on to an y inj ur y
translates into the attribution of several inj uries to him. This diversity in the narr atives of inj ury
transforms his madness into a metaphor for the injur y of Dersim. In that sense, the embrace of
Şeywuşen b y Dersimi s ociety indi c ates an act of holding on to a bro ader injury that k eeps
together the diverse bounded identit y narratives of Armenians, Kurds, Alevis, Kurdish -Alevis,
Za zas and leftists. I n this wa y , the figure of Şe ywuşen offers connectivity between different
communities of loss that are attached to particular injuries which they prioritiz e in their own
socially performed identit ies . Şey wuşen b ecoming the metaphor of the inju ry o f Dersim is the
process I f rame as “ affliction of otherness. ” I n Butler’ s frame, there is no u ltimate
subjectivation: it is woven by man y thr eads, and all of them int erpe llate the subject not in
independent but in spe cific wa y s. In this com plex process of subjectivation I focus on
interpellation through epistemic and ph ysical state violence, which presents Dersim as the
“ other ” of the state. I n that sense, state violence goes hand in hand with knowledge production
on the region, and has effects going be y ond the c ase of Şey wuşen. I an alyze this creative co -
constitution of the identity of Şeywuşen as affliction of the otherne ss produ ced as a p art of the
statecraft in the reg ion.
Madness and politics
This dissertation draws on a two-layered analysis of madness: the medicalized and pathologized
madness represented in the biog raph y o f Şe y wuş en by the Elaziğ Mental Hospit al , and hol y -

Butler. Th e Psychic Life of Po wer, 104.

madness which I frame as a site where silenced past comes to hunt the pr esent and promotes
open-ende d en g agement with the ungrie vable l oss of Dersim. To elaborate on those two
differe nt cosmolo gies of madness, I bring together the histor y of ps y chiatr y and the hist ory of
secularization. Early interest in the history of psy chiatr y in Tur ke y developed unde r the
influence of the biomedical ps ychiatr ic model, which suggested that mental illnesses have
always ex isted but were cate gorized as demonic possession, witchcra ft and the like in the pre-
modern period, and onl y t hanks to the development of modern science have become recognized
as mental illnesses.

Influence d b y Durkh eim’s wo rk on suicide,

one o f the early examples
of stud y ing social norms through those who violate them, and Foucault’s works on madness,
social historians have appropriated the strategy o f ex amining the abnormal to understand the
social order. Erving Goffman contributed to de-m edica lizing the li tera ture on ps y chiatr y with
his work Asylums , wh ere he relates mental disabil ities as sociall y ascribed labels and not as
inherent mental condition s. Focusin g on the instit utionalization of mental hospit als , he analyzes
them as total institutions, where the confined are treated alike with like-situated individuals,
and their use of time a nd movement is regulated in a place cut off from the outside world.

With Goffman’s and Foucault’s works on confinement of the mentally il l,

mental
institutions started to be seen as the paradigmatic re presentations of the m odern state and its
statecraft. Framing the as y lum as the solid outcome of the victory o f r eason in the West,
Fouca ult anal y ses madn ess as a site wh ere the modern state exercises its p ower and authorit y
to regulate and regulari ze society . He describe s the birth of the asylum as the model for
industrial societ y , where different regimes o f di sciplining w ere formulated and practiced.
Influenced b y Foucault, David J . Rothman who worked on the birth of th e a sylum in the United
States

a nd Klaus Doerner in Great Britain, Germany and France,

put forwa rd the as y lum a s
the site where the bourgeoisie expresses the desire to establish control. Prioritiz ing the central
role of professionalization in ps y chiatr y , Andre w Scull frame s the dev elopment of m ental
asy lums in Eng land a s more re lat ed to gaining control over the treatment of mentall y ill people

For an exa m p le of such a narr ative see Albert De utsch, The Mentally Ill in America: A History of Th eir Care
and Treatment fr om Colon ial Times (Ne w York: Do ubleda y, Doran, 1 937).

E m ile D urkhaim, Le S uicide , (P aris: An cien ne Librarie Germer B ailliere, 189 7).

Erving Goffman, Asylums , (Har mondsworth: Pengui n, 1986).

Michel Foucault, Hi story of madness . (Routledge, 2013 ).

David J. Rothm an, The Discove ry of Asylum: Social Ord er and Disorder in New Republic (B oston: Little
Brown, 197 1).

Klaus Doerner, Madmen an d the Bourgeo isie: A Social History of I nsanity and Psych iatry (Oxford: B asil
Blackwell, 19 81).

than curing them, in the context of a capitalist market econom y that renders the mental ly ill
economically unproduc tive subjects.

There was litt le interest in the history of ps y chiatry until the decline of its insti tutional
legitimacy during the 19 60s and 1970s and the birth of the anti-ps y chiatry movement which
question ed the institutiona l power relationship in the domain of psychiatry and its methods.

Expanding on S cull’s focus on professionalization, Thomas Szasz, one of the pioneer ing
psyc hiatrists of the anti-ps y chiat ry movement, fueled a long debate. Starting with a question
asked b y J ohn Stuart Mill “was there ever an y domination which did not appe ar natur al to those
who possessed it, ”

S zasz argues that wha t was s een as witchcraft in the 15 th centur y wa s what
is seen as mental illness in the modern world. Framing this change as a result of the
transformation of a religious ideolog y to a scientifi c one he sees this process as the replacement
of the persecutions of heretics b y th e persecution of mental patients.

In this regard, he argue s
that psy chiatry is as an i deology produced b y a c ommunity of sci ence and not a science that
“cannot be warped by parochial loy a lties . ”

The ideolo gy of ps y chiatry th at is important for m y arguments in this dissertation
belongs to the earl y ye ars of the Turkish Republic, when Turkishness and its others were both
in the making. I enter this discussion through the establishment of the Elaz ığ Mental Hospital
in 1925. Unlike in the countries c ited a bove, in the Ottoman Empire the increase in the number
of mental hospitals was not a phenomenon of the 19 th century but the 20 th . Onl y after the
declaration of the second constitution in 1908 did the interest in confining the mentall y ill
become a priorit y in Ottoman land s. W hile som e explain this growing interest in relation to
deficienc ies in the existing pla ces for the inc rea sin g number of the m entally il l,

others interpret
this change within the framework of nationalization as the Ottom an Empire was r eplaced b y
the Turkish Republ ic . Ay han Ç ağla y an argues that psyc hiatr y provided the Turkish R epublic
the invaluable gift: “ideal ized, homogenous, and fix ed body of population in need of discover y ,

Andre w Sc ull, The Mos t Solitary of A fflictions: Madness and S ociety in Britain, 1700 -1900 (New Have n:
Yale University P ress, 1993)

Rothman, The Di scovery of Asylu m , 10 .

John Stuart Mill, The Su bjection of Woman (London: Dent - Ever ym an’s Libr ary , 196 5), 251 -252 cited in
Thomas Stephe n Szasz. The m anufactu re of madn ess: A comparative study of the inquisition a nd the mental
health movement . New Yo rk: (Harper Colophon Books, 1970), XX.

Szasz, The ma nufacture of madness , 1 11-136.

Thomas Stephe n Szasz, Ideolo gy and insan ity: Essays on th e psychia tric dehuman iza tion of man (Sy racuse
University Pr ess, 1991), 77 -78.

Fatih Artvinli, Delil ik, siyaset ve toplum: Toptaşı Bimarhanesi (1873 - 1927) (Boğaziçi Üni versitesi Yayınevi,
2013), 18 - 19.

discipline a nd reg ularization . ”

F ocusing on the wri ting s of the eugenicist pri me minister Sadi
Irmak (in office 1974 – 75), Murat Ergin ar g ue s that the role of eugenics, biometrics and
anthropometric claims are dismissed in the discussions on race and Turkishness. They had a
key role in the making of Turkishness; the y operated as a regulator o f the “n egotiations between
Turkish identity a nd modernit y . ”

Elazığ was the cit y whic h served as one of the bi gg est former depo rtation hub s during
the Armenian Genocide and as the mi litary h eadquarter where the Dersim Genocide was
managed. Between these two genocidal ev ents, t he Elazığ Mental Hospital was founded b y
Ahmed Şükrü Emed (1877–1940). The first director of the Elazığ Mental Hospit al, Emed was
professionally soci alized during a time when eugenic ideas dominat ed the field of ps y chiatr y in
Turkey and spent a y ear i n German y during his education workin g closel y with Emil Kraepelin
(1856 – 1926), one of the foremost figures in German biological ps y chiatry.

Considering its
founder’s background, the establishment of the mental hospital i n Elazığ cannot be considered
separa tel y from th e r acializing dimensions of earl y republican ps y chiatr y . In that sense, as an
institution it operates as a marke r of the racialized medicalized discourses of the time.
While framing m edicalization through the establishment of a mental h ospital as a
component of the state vi olence helps us to frame the hospital in Elazığ, classical Foucauldian
and Goffmanian approach es remain insufficient in elaborating the sac ralized cha racteristics of
madness ex emplified b y the case of Ş ey w uşen . T o unpack the translations of hol y-madne ss,
such as therapeutic capacities and creative enga gement with loss, I turn t o the discussion on
how secularism shapes not onl y subjectivities but also regulate s the sphere of health. While
Fouca ult and Goffman re main within a sec ular framework for approaching madness, I an aly ze
holy-madness as a vantage point from which to critique secular ism and its regime of viol ence.
Analy zin g the entanglement of therapeutic power and the political rule, Christopher Dole
argues th at se cular ism in Turke y is not just a politi cal doctrine but “a normative way of li fe”
which “works to organize the forms of speech an d truth that are to be granted credibility in a
given set of conditions. ”

What a normative wa y of life refers to in this case is the organization
of “sensibilities, sentim ent, and possi bilities” along with “instit utions and processes that

Ayhan Çağlaya n, “ I n th e na me of Mod ernity , for the sake of the Natio n: Madness, Ps y c hiatr y and Po litics
from the Otto m a n Empire to the Turkish Rep ublic (1500 - 1950),“ unpublished MA t hesis, dep artm ent of Social
Anthropo logy (T oronto: York University:200 5), 199.

Murat Ergin. "B iom etrics and Anthrop om e trics: T he Twins of T urkish Modernity." Patterns of P rejudice 42,
no. 3 (2 008): 281 -304, 304.

Fethi Erden, Türk Hek imleri B iyografisi (İstanbu l: Çituri Bilad erler Basım Evi, 194 5).

Chri stopher Dole, Healing S ecular Life: Los s an d Devo tion in Modern Turk ey (Philadelp hia: Universit y o f
Pennsylvania Press, 2 012), 8.

organize relationships bet ween seein g and being seen, speaking and listening.”

In other wo rds,
secularism works as a social force reg u lating what is say able and he arable, the forms of speech
and truth in the public space .

In this framework, in which “healing is fundamentall y connected to the government of
life and the reproduction of governa ble subjects, ”

the kind of therape uti c power and the
chance of engaging with loss becomes problematic in temporal terms. W hat hol y-madness
signifies is something that is supposed to be left in the past. Taking into consideration that
secular national time was inscribed onto the lands ca pe o f Dersim throu g h genocidal violence,
holy-madness becomes that which escape s despi te all the reg ulations of the state’s violent
statecraft, and comes bac k to haunt those who live in that ge ograph y . In t hat sense, the hol y-
madness of Şe y wuşen, is a site of return , “ wherein unspoken hist ories of poli tical-theological
exchange and the forms of violence th at mar ked secularism's orig ins are brought to bear on the
present. ”

Space, tempora lit y , and emotions
Focusing on the different memor y re g imes forged by three differen t public monuments, in this
dissertation I anal y z e how the off icial historiography promoted by the stat ue of Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk was challenged b y th e statue of Şe y wuşen (inaugurat ed 1995) and the statue of S eyy i d
Riza (inaugurat ed 2010), the emblematic leader o f resistance to th e Dersim Genoc ide. While
the statue of Şe y w uşen was erected durin g the peak of militar y clashes b etwee n th e Turkish
Armed Force s and the PKK, the statue of Se y y id Riza was erec ted during the precarious peace
neg otiations of the 2000s. Comparing th e memor y r egimes of those two statues I of fer a co -
reading of different regimes of public grief in ti mes of conflict and temporary peace. Bringing
in conve rsation the literature on spac e a nd emotions, I depict the shift in the emotional re gimes
that were inscribed in the landscape of Dersim in different time periods.
Following Henri Lefebvre ’s theorizing on the production of space, many social
scientists have turned to the wa y s in which space is sociall y constituted b y different social
actors.

However, few have considered space as an ac tor that has an effect on the lifeworlds of
people be y ond the presen ce or absence of natural resources. Tu rning to Lefebvre allows me to

Dole, Hea ling Secular Life , 8.

Dole, Hea ling Secular Life , 12.

Dole, Hea ling Secular Life , 13.

Dole, Hea ling Secular Life , 101.

Henri Lefebvre, The Productio n of Space (Oxford: Blackwe ll, 1991).

emphasize space as a socially produced entity wi thout valorizing space over time but
conceptualizing it in an ongoing, mutuall y constitutive relationship.

I explore the landscape
of Dersim and Tunceli within the social relation s they have produced thr ough state violence
and militarization. The articulati ons of the power relationships through sp atial networks are
significa nt for this disse rtation. These n etworks condense broader relations of domination and
resistance in their m ateriality as well as the capacit y to challenge the emot ional regime that is
inscribed in the landsca pe.
The attention to space in ex ploring emotional and affective r egimes is signi fica nt for m y
conceptual approach.

To understand how past atrocities continue to h aunt people, spatial
policies and political su bjectivities, I tu rn to me mory studies which emerged in the w ake o f
decolonization and the social movements of the 1960s, with the aim of writing alternative and
revisionist histories.

The clash between memor y and histor y produ ctively disrupted “the
relative stabilit y o f the past in its pastness”

and at the same time acknowledge d that humans
participate in history “both as actors and as nar rators.”

With the help of memor y , which
“allows us to call on singular ex perie nces in an effort to make sense of th e present”

100

I trace
how spatially inscr ibed p ain and suf fering of past atrocities haunt the present.
I engage with memor y a nd haunting throu gh material objects: st atues and memorials. I n
the li tera ture on publi c monuments, memorials are generall y seen as attempts to fix certain
forms of historical interpretation

101

that prescribe wha t to remember as well as what to forge t,

102

and as tools to master the past from the perspective of the pre sent.

103

The case at hand poses
challenge s to theorizations of public monument alization as closure stor ies. I draw on the
literature on the agonistic, neither dead nor alive characteristics of monuments,

104

the emotional

Henri Lefebvre. The Productio n of Space (Oxford: Blackwe ll, 1991).

Margrit Per nau. "Space and emotion: buildin g to feel." Hist ory Compass 1 2, no. 7 (2014) : 541 -549., B enno
Gammerl., ‘E m o tional St y les: Concepts and Challen ges ’, Rethinkin g History , 16 (2012): 161 – 75.

Huyssen, An d reas. "P resent pasts: Media, p olitics, amnesia. " Public Culture 12, no. 1 (20 00): 21 - 38.

Andreas Huyssen, Presents P asts: Urban Pa limpsests and the Politics of Memory ( Stanford: Stanford
University P ress, 2003) , 1.

Trouillot, Michel -Rolph. Sile ncing the pa st: Power and the produ ction of history . B eacon Press, 1995, 2.

100

Meltem Ahıska, “Arşiv Korkusu ve Kara kaplı Nizami Be y: Türkiye’de Tar ih, Hafıza ve İktidar.” In
Türkiye’de İ ktidar Yeniden Düşünmek , ed. K. Murat Güne y ( İstanbul: Varlık Ya yınları 200 9).

101

Vincent Crapanza no, Ima ginative horizons: An Essay in Literary Philosoph ical Anthropology (Chicago:
University of Ch icago P ress, 2004 ), 148 - 177.

102

Michael Rowlands, “Remember ing to Forget. S ublim atio n as Sacrifice in War Memorials.” in The Art of
Forgetting . ed. Adrian Forty and Susanne K uechler (New Y ork: Berg, 19 99), 129 -146.

103

Huyssen, An d reas, Pre sents Pa sts: Urban Palimpsests an d the Politics o f Memory (Stanf ord: Stanford
University Pr ess, 2003 ).

104

Katherine Verder y, The politi cal lives of dea d bodies: rebu r ial and postsocialist chang e (New York:
Columbia Univers ity Press, 1999) .

regimes the y for ge,

105

along with the gendered d y n amics the y generate.

106

In the absence of
official reco gnition of past state-sponsored violence and in the presence of continuous state
violence, I focus on the open-ended memor y regimes that memorials and statues forge in the
landscape of Dersim.
The open-endedness o f those memor y regime s are historically situated. They are
regulated through the “li mits of the sa y able” in t he public sphere of Dersim in specific time
periods. As Butler argue s, the “public sphere is consti tuted in part b y what cannot be said and
what cannot be sho wn. T he limi ts of the say able, the limits of what can appear, circumscribe
the domain in which poli tical speech operates[.]”

107

In s y stematicall y silencing the memor y of
the Dersim Genocide for more than 70 years in the Turkish public sphere, the formation of the
cityscape of Tunceli ma y be conceptualized as a landscape of denial. This spatiall y ins cribed
regime rendered the pai n and suff ering of the genocidal violence il legitimate and the refore
ungrie vable in the public sphere. This regime o f denial could onl y be chall enge d in the 2000s
through a different “ distributi on of public g ri eving”

108

which allowed c ertain kind of mourning
practice s to happen in the publi c spac e in Tunceli.
Grief and melancholia have be en mainl y addressed throu g h a Freudian approach that
tends towards a stor y of closure of th e one mou rning for loss. Mournin g, Freud w rites, “is
regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has
taken the pl a ce of on e, such as on e’s countr y , lib erty , an ideal and so on.”

109

W hile mourning
is the stage when libido is withdrawn from the lost object and becomes graduall y available to
invest in new objects, melancholia is the refute of t he grief and inabilit y to detach the self from
the lost object. What Freud sees as pathological has inspi re d social theorists to engage with
cases where there is no happy endin g, no closure, no reconciliation. David Eng and David
Kazanjian de-pathologize melancholia, inviting us to thi nk of it as an “ongoing and op en
relationship with the past — bringing it s ghosts and spe cters, its flaring and fleeting images, into
the pres ent.”

110

This invitation is not only for “a conti nuous engagement with loss and its
remains” but to generate “sites for memory and histor y , for the rewriting of the past as well as

105

Erika Doss, Th e Emotiona l Life of Contempo rary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Tempo rary
Memorials ( Amsterdam U. P ress , 200 8).

106

Janet J acobs, Memorializing the Holo caust: Gender, Genoci de, and Collective Me m or y (London: I. B. Tauris,
2010).

107

Judith Butler, An tigo ne’s Claim: Kinship bet ween Life a nd Death (New York 20 00), xvii.

108

Judith Butler, Fra m es of War: W hen Is Lif e Grievable? (London/New York 201 0), 38.

109

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melanc holia,” in The Stand ard Edition of the Complete Psychologica l W orks
of Sigmu nd Freud, vol. 14, trans. and ed. Ja m es Strac hey (L ondon: Hogarth Press, 19 57), 243.

110

David L. Eng and David Kazanjian, ed s., Loss: The Politics of Mourning (Ber keley: Un iver sity of Cali fornia
Press, 20 03), 1.

the reimagining o f the fu ture.”

111

W ith Eng and K azanjian, I t ake the attachment to loss as a
site of creative e ngagement with the past that persists in the present.
Religion, secularism and culturalization
The relationship between poli tics and r eligion is a theme that runs this dissertation, throug h the
discussions of the rituals woven around hol y-madness. As a found ational component of the
works of Ma rx, W eber, Durkheim and S immel, the stud y of religion and moderniz ation is one
of the pillars of the socio logica l im agination.

112

The interaction between the religious and t he
political spheres are large l y discussed within theories of secularism. Earlier liter ature on
secularism is most ly co ncerne d with explaining the move towards a w ay of li fe in which
relig ion is an optional re f erence point. This hist ori cal process of differe nti ating the institutional
spheres of religion and p olitics, or secularization, has been explained as a gradual decline of the
role of reli g ion following the emergence of nation - states and humanism, which ended the “naïv e
acknowledgement of the transcendent, or of goals or claims that go bey ond human
flourishing.”

113

However, t he increasin g visibilit y of religiosity in th e 19 80s has required
differe ntiating reli g ion a nd politics. Following Weber’s thesis of gradua l decline, some started
worrying about the “re surgence of religion” whil e others moved toward s a revision of the
“straightforward narra tive of progress from the religious to the secular . ”

114

While earlier enga g ements with the differentiation of reli gion and politics take se cular
norms and values as “natural and connected to freedom” of indiv iduals, more recent approaches
emphasize the constructed notion of power and control over the demarcation between reli gion
and politics. In othe r w ords, what h as be en de picted as a social reality h as started being
deconstructed with an emphasis on state powe r in the recent literature.

115

In that regard, th e
critical approach of T alal Asad info rms m y ela boration of the case of Turke y . For Asad
secularism is, hist orica lly and contemporaril y , an expression of the state’s sovereign power in
defining, managing and intervening into religious life and sensibilities.

116

Differe nti ating
between the secular as a domain of historically constructed behaviors, sensibili ties and
epistemologies on one hand, and secularism as a doctrine and political arrangement of the

111

Eng and Kazanj ian, Loss , 2.

112

Bryan S. T urner. Religio n in Modern Society: Citizenship, S ecularization a nd the State (New York:
Cambridge Universit y Press), 134 .

113

Charles Ta y lor. A secular age . (Harvard university press, 2 007), 22.

114

T alal As ad. F ormations of th e s ecular: Ch ristianity, Islam, modernity (Stanford Uni versity P ress, 2003), 1.

115

Hussein Ali Ag ra ma. Questio ning secula rism: Islam, sovereignty, and the rule of law in mo dern Egyp t
(University of Chica go Press, 20 12), 26.

116

Talal A sad, “Tr y i ng to Understand Fre nch Secularism,“ i n Political Th eologies: Public Religions in a Post -
Secula r W o rld , eds. Hent d e Vries and La w re nce E. Sul livan (Ne w Yo rk: Fordha m Univers ity Press, 200 6).

modern nation-state on the other,

117

he point s towards a mutually constitutive structure of
secularism and the secular.

118

What is crucial for m y discussion is the indete rminate space th at is created throug h the
reproduc tion of the secular and secularism in every d ay l ife. Asad ar g ues that the nation-state
requires “clearl y demarcated spaces that it can classify and regulate: religion, education, health,
leisure, work, income, justice, and war.” The spac e allocated to religion is repeatedl y “redefined
by th e law because the reproduction of secular life within and be y on d the nation -state
continually affects the discursive clarity of that space.”

119

The struggle “to extend individual
self- creation” and “claims to knowled ge ” destabilizes already established boundarie s.

120

This
feature of the moder n s tate is framed b y Hussein Ali Agrama as a “growing re gulatory
capacity .” For Agrama “secularism has long b een, and is increasingl y, fra ught with an
irrevocable indet erminacy . ”

121

Following Asad and Agrama, I ar g ue that , in the Tu rkish case ,
this space of indeterminac y is historicall y grounded in the realm of culture. Culturalization has
been a stra teg y to depoliticiz e the de mand of rec ognition in the religious domain voice d by the
Alevis of Turkey.
Culturalization of what is regarded as outside the re ligious realm is a historicall y situated
strategy that, in Turkey, pla y e d a formational role in the making of the boundaries of the
relig ious domain. Two y ears after the establishment of the Tur kish R epublic, parliament passed
Law 556 6 which closed down “[a]ll of the tekkes a nd zaviyes ( dervish lodges), whether
established as a vakif (f oundation) or under the personal prope rty right of its sheikh, or by
whatever other m anne r.” I t also prohibited “[a]ll of the tarikats (religious orders) using titl es
such as sheikh, dervish, disciple, dede , seyit, çelebi, baba, emir, nakib, ha life, fortune teller,
sorcerer, üfürükçü, and those who write charms to help people to attai n their wishes; all
functions rendered according to these titl es and des ignations; and the wearing of dervish
costume.”

122

Through Law 5566, mosques became the onl y of ficially reco gnized places of
worship in the republic. In 1950, Law 5566 was revised and some o f the closed -down dervish

117

T alal As ad. F ormations of th e s ecular: Ch ristianity, Islam, modernity (Stanford Uni versity P ress, 2003).

118

Agrama. Qu est ioning secu larism , 2.

119

Asad. Formation s of the secula r, 201.

120

Asad. Formation s of the secula r, 201.

121

Agrama. Quest ioning secu larism , 26 .

122

Translated b y an d cited in Christop her Dole, Hea ling Secular Life: Loss and Devotio n in Modern Turkey , 1st
ed, Conte m p orar y Ethnography (Philadelp hia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 20 12), 8 – 12.

lodges, which the state consider ed as belonging to “g r ea t Turks , ” were transformed into
museums or cultural ce nters.

123

In a context where the onl y legall y r ec ognized place of worship is the mosque, turning
a selection of former religious sites turning int o cultural centers involved not onl y a pro cess of
culturalization but the demar cation of what belon gs to Turkish culture. Tu rk and Turkish, lik e
any othe r categor y o f identit y is shaped throug h multiple constructions. The embrac e of
Turkishness as a self-defining categor y of identit y does not h ave a long histor y . Until the end
of the W orld War I , Turk was not a term for self -identification.

124

While Ottomans considered
themselves Rumi , a term adopted from th e B y za ntines, Turk was used b y the Europeans to
classify the Ottom ans. T he term Turk as a s elf-appellation started being popular during the
formation of Turkish na tionalism and “came to signif y cultur al identit y under a n ationalist
construction” in relations hip with Europe.

125

The fact that a European construct would come to
serve as self-identification for the n ew r epublic is instructive for the und erstanding of Turkish
nationalism and modernism.
Historiography on the T urkish Republic as a narrative of W esternization

126

is usuall y
based either on a secularist premise or on the critique of I sl am promoted by the republic itself.
The law certainly pla y ed a crucial rol e in the implementation of secular mod ernity which a imed
to limit the social and political influence of religion and to subordinate it to the national
interest.

127

W ithout deny in g the republic’s radical state-imposed reforms, such as the abolition
of the sult anate in 1922 and the caliphate in 1924 , and the adoption of the S wiss civil code in
1926, in this dissertation I dr aw attention to the p roblem of the cat egory o f Westernization in
historical anal y sis. Suggesting an “original distinction and incommensurabilit y between a

123

“The to m b s belonging to grea t Turks can be op ened to public by the Mi nistry of National Education. T he
necessar y number of state offi cers will be app ointed to take care of those tombs. The list o f tombs that will be
open to p ublic will be prepared by the Ministr y o f National Education and pr ouved by the Cou ncil of Ministers.”
“ Türbelerden Türk büyüklerin e ait olan lar Milli Eğitim Bakanlığın ca umuma açılabilir. Bun la ra bakım için
gerekli memur ve hizmetliler ta yin edilir. Açılaca k türbelerin listesi Milli E ğitim Bakan liğinca ha zırlanır ve
Bakan lar Kurulunca tasvip o l unur .” Res m i Gaz ete is availab le online: www.resmigazete.go v.tr/arsiv/7448.p d f
The revision of t he Law 5566 is on page 18 010, tr anslation mine.

124

Cemal Kafadar. Between two worlds: The con struction of the Ottoma n state (Univ of Cali fornia Press, 1 995),
3- 4.

125

Yael Navaro -Yashin, Faces of th e state: Secu larism and public life in Tu r key (Princeton University P ress,
2002), 10.

126

Bernard Lew i s, The eme rgence of mo dern Turkey . No. 135. Oxford Universit y Press, 1 961. ; Niyazi Berke s.
The develo pment of secularism in Tu rkey . Mc Gill-Queen's P ress-MQUP, 19 64. : Erik J. Zürcher Turkey: A
modern history (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017) .

127

Markus Dressler, “The Religio -Secular Contin uum: Reflectio ns on the Religious Dime ntions of Turkish
Secularism“ in After S ecular Life , eds. W inn ifred Faller s Sullivan, Rober t A.Yelle, Mateo T aussig -Rubbo
(California: Sta ndford Universit y Press, 20 11), 221 -241, 223- 24.

constructed “East” and “West”

128

the notion of Westernization, as an y oth er claim to majo r
historical rupture, assumes “b y d efault, that an essenti ally separate “culture” ex isted prior to the
development or th e shift. ”

129

Considering the identit y claims of a uthenticity of the Turkish stat e
requires also considering this process. Following t he dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the
early 20 th centur y , se ve ral nations initiated a s earch for unitary and original “c ulture of
circumscribed pi ece s of territor y . ”

130

The founders of Turkey solved the dil emma of reconcilin g
Europeanization with nationalism

131

b y rooting their “ authentic ” culture in the Tur kic groups o f
ancient Central Asia. This source of authenticity f ac ilitated the rupture from the Ottoman
Empire, performin g mod ern qualities while simul taneously m aintaining a solid cultural and
ethnic refere nce that keeps Turkishness di stinct from Europea n identit y .
In thi s contex t, being p art of Turkish culture translates into being conducive to be in g
instrumentalized for the performance of modernit y on the one hand, and authenticity on the
other. For Alevis, thi s pos es complexities, and they w ere incor porated in to diffe rent nationalist
projects in diverse wa y s. As an element in the Central Asian cultural toolkit, Alevism become
a part of the continuit y narrative of Turkish nationalism which suggests a long-term cultural
continuity between Central Asian cultur es and the Turkish Republic which had been interrupted
during the Ottoman Empire. In this way, Alevis m beca me a c entral component of Turkish
nationalism.

132

Whil e Anatolian Alevis were mor e easil y incorporat ed in to the nationa l
project,

133

Kurdish-Alevis were exposed to different political discourses. Turkish nationalism
was invested in proving that there are no Kurdish -Alevis but there are Kurdified Alevis who
must be helped to reme mber their original language.

134

Kurdish nationalism participated i n
deny ing this difference b y promoting the idea t hat “the Alevi Ku rds were r eally Ku rds and
nothing else. ”

135

On the oth er hand, “based on the di stinct Zaza vernacular , ” Zaza nationalists

128

Navaro-Yashi n. Faces of the state , 11 .

129

Navaro-Yashi n. Faces of the state , 10 .

130

Navaro-Yashi n. Faces of the state , 11 .

131

Deniz Kandi y oti, “Identity and ist Discontents: W omen and the Nation„ in Colonia l Discou rse and Post -
Colonial Th eory : A Reader, ed. Williams, Patr ick, and Laura Chrisman. ( London: Taylor & Francis Group,
1993), 379 .

132

Markus Dressler. Writing Relig ion :the Ma king of Turkish Alevi Islam (Ne w York: O xford University Press,
2013), 15.

133

Ahmet Yaşar Oca k. Baba ı  ler isyanı: a levı  tarihsel a ltyapısı yahu t Anadolu'da İslâm -Türk hetero doksisinin
teşekkülü (Der gâh Yayınları, 19 96).

134

Referring to Ha m d i Bey’s rep ort written in 1925. Cited in Hüseyin Ya ym an. Sark Mesel esinden Demo kratik
Acilima: Türkiye’ nin Kürt Sorun u Hafizasi , Ankara:SETA, 2011, 92 - 93.

135

Michiel Leezenber g, “Kurdish Alevis a nd the Kurdish Nati onalist Move m e nt in the 199 0.” in Turkey’s Alevi
Enigma : A Comphrehensive Ove rview , eds. J . White and Jo ngerden L eid en (Boston: Brill, 2 003), p:204.

endorsed the idea of having an inde pendent Zazaistan formed b y “a distin ct people o r ev en a
distinct nation. ”

136

Incorporation in to the sphere o f Turkishness remains the only possibilit y for the
inclusion of Alevis in a context whe re there is no legal recognition of Alevism as a relig ion.
Th is incorpora tion opera t es a s a soli difier of the unity of the regulated re ligious space ba sed on
the Hanefi interpre tation of Sunni I sl am. In other words, considerin g Alevi sm a part o f Turkish
culture displaces it from being a r eligious belief. The Directo rate of R eligious Affairs (DRA ,
Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı ), which was int egrated in to the state a dministration in 1924 to define,
organize and regulate pu blic I slamic practices, uses the strategy of culturali zation to draw the
lines between what is acceptable and what is not in the public religious domain. Framing it as
a threat to “ notions of I sl amic purity and authenticity , ” DRA labels what is not i n its control as
“cultural” and “condemns [ it ] as illegal innovations. ”

137

Base d on the “particular binaries such
as religious/secular and religion/culture“

138

and dist i nctions between “traditional cultures” o f
Alevism and the “common share of Islam,”

139

the DRA legitimizes mosques as the onl y plac e
of worship, p romoting th e “tru e” religion and not t he “cultural, the local, the contingent, in sum,
the inauthentic/heterodox.”

140

Pushed towards the realm of culture, Alevi organizations are governe d either b y the
Directorate-General of Foundations ( Vakıflar Gen el Müdürlüğü ) — as in the case of Alevi plac es
of worship, cemevi s — or b y the Ministr y of Culture and Tourism — as in the case of museum -
lodges. I n this ca se, the cultura l sphere becomes the only plac e whe re the issue of diversit y can
be addressed. Culturalization has brought an unprecedented visibilit y t o Alevism clearl y
divorced from its political a g enda o f re cognition

141

via public performances of Alevi rituals
such as semah . This visi bilit y is an expression of “an aestheticised notion of mul ticulturalis m
that conceptualizes most minorities in Turkey as nostalgic r eminders of a mul ti -ethnic
empire”

142

and as traces of the past ra ther than living communities.

136

Michiel Leezenber g, “Kurdish Alevis a nd the Kurdish Nati onalist Move m e nt in the 199 0.” P:201.

137

Markus Dressler, “The Re ligio - Secular Continuu m“ , 224.

138

Markus Dressler, “Making Religion throug h Secularist Legal Discourse: T he Case of T urk ish A levism” i n
Secula rism and Religion -making . ed s. Markus Dressler and Arvind Ma ndair (Oxford Univ ersity Press, 2011 ),
193.

139

Dressler, “Making Religion through Secularis t Legal Discourse,” 1 92.

140

Dressler, “Making Religion through Secularis t Lega l Discourse,” 19 3.

141

Kabir T am b ar, "T he aesthetics of public visibility: Alevi Semah and the parad oxes of pluralis m in Turkey."
Comparative Studies in S ociety and History 52, no. 3, 2010: 652 - 679.

142

Banu Karaca, " Europeanisation from the m ar gins? I stanbul’ s c ultural capital init iative and the for m ation of
European cultural p olicies." In The Cultura l Politics of Euro pe , p p. 169-188. Routledge, 2 013, p:16 7.

Methodolo gy
Dersim is a region that , on the one h and, feeds t he fantas y of “discovering otherness” in an
overdetermined setting and on the other resists being approached as a “bounded area”

143

of
research in the classical sense. Since it operated as the constitutive “other”

144

of the Turkish
state in the makin g o f T urkishness, it is framed in the national ima ginary as a place that is
differe nt than the rest of the countr y . Howe ver, due to continuous state violence and systema ti c
economic disinvestment policies of the state, today Dersimis mostl y liv e outsi de Dersim, in
differe nt metropoles of Turke y and Europe. In addition, since Alevi and Kurdish poli tical
mobilizations were organiz ed in Europe more powerfull y than in Turke y in times of political
pressure (th e 1980 c oup d’état, the low-intensit y war be tween the P KK an d the Tur kish Armed
Forces in the 1990s), the labor invested in identity f ormation and rights struggle outside Turke y
is undeniable .

145

In that regard, Dersim is a diaspor ic region. This make s it hard to research the
region within the geographica l boundaries of what i s today Tunceli.
Along with the geo g raphical diffusion, the thematic focus of this researc h is also
unbounded. Researching sacra lized madn ess in a heavil y contested l andscape require s makin g
ge nealo g ies o f seemingl y “free - floating” r eferences. During my fieldwork I found that
collecting stories about Şe y w uşen and other madmen was like a ssembling what Dersimis want
to tell about the re g ion, their lives, about politics and spirituality. A m ap of what peopl e
attributed to Şey wuşen would include a range of stories from fantasies to claims of truth. By
fantasies, I refer to what “survives an aly sis, crit ique and deconstruction . ”

146

For instance,
although people know that Şeywuşen was born after the Armenian Genocid e and his village is
not one which was destro y ed during the D ersim Genocide, this knowled ge does not prevent
them from telli ng stories about the role of genocidal violence in Şe y wuşen’s madness. Instea d
of differentiating fantas y from “real” or truth claim s m y aim in this diss ertation is to map the
reference points that appear in stories a bout Şe y w uşen.
To do so, m y r esearc h combines ethnographic and archival research methods. W hile the
written sources (the archi ve of the Elazığ Mental Hospital, local newsp apers, journals or printed
media which is distributed nationwide) had v ery little to tell about Şe ywuşen, Dersimis had an

143

Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, " Discipline and pr actice:“The field” as site, m ethod , and loca tion in
anthropology." Anthropo logical location s: Boundaries and grou nds of a field science ( Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997 ) 1-47:5.

144

Göner. “A Social Hi story of Po w er and Struggle in T urkey ” .

145

Ayşe Betül Çeli k. "“I miss my village !”: forced Kurdish migrants in Istanb ul an d their representatio n in
associations." New perspectiv es on Turkey 32 (2005) : 137-163.

146

Navaro-Yashi n. Faces of the state , 4.

abundance of stori es belonging to different periods. Although there is litt le information in the
institutional archives on Şeywuşen’s life, thi s silence is illustrative with regard to the archival
politics in Turkey . In hi s book on destro y ed archives in Turke y , Rıfat Bali, an independent
scholar spe cializing in the hist ory of mi norities in Ottoman and republican hist ory , states that
the General Hospit al — which later b eca me the Elazig Mental Hospital — that belonged to
Protestant American missionaries had both an archive and a librar y . After its seizure b y the
Turkish state, it was transformed into Elazığ Mental Hospital in 1925. B oth the archive, with
its documents re lated to missi onary activities, and the library , containing books of American
medicine, w ere given to a baker y, to use the paper do cumenta tion as fu el, in return for free
bread for the hospi tal.

147

While this story ex plains the absence of the Gen era l Hospital’s archive,
the stories I collected in the Elazığ Mental Hospital and Tunceli Municipality about their
archives are illustrative of contemporar y ar chiving pra ctices.
In March 2015, I visi ted th e Ela zığ Me ntal Hospital to which Şe y wuşen was committed
by his famil y in the 1960s. My application to access the file of Hüse y in Tatar ( Ş eywuşe n ) was
officially refused, citing regulations on prote cting patients’ ri g ht to privac y .

148

Until I received
the of ficial re jection, I spent three days in the hosp ital’s ga rden where I had a chance to collect
a number of dif ferent r easons for the rejection of m y application related to the state of th e
hospital’s archive. While the gene ra l se cretary of t he hospital blamed a floo d in the 1970s, the
director of the hospital described a fire in the 1980s , which, each claimed had destro y ed the
archive, that is wh y unfortunatel y it w as not available for r esearchers. Aft er drinkin g several
glasse s of tea with the a rchivists of the hospital, I lea rnt that there had be en no fire affecting the
archive and, after the flood, the archive was restored. The archivists unoff iciall y looked for th e
file of Hüseyin Ta tar and told me it was missing .
My conversation in Mar ch 2014 with Edibe Şahin, the co -ma yor of D ersim belonging
to the pro-Kurdish Barı ş ve De mokrasi Partisi (BDP, Peace and Democracy Pa rty) helps

147

Rıfat Bali, Bir Kıyımın , Bir Talan ın Öyküsü: Hu rdaya (S)atılmayan Matbu ve Ya zma Eserler, Evrâk - ı
Metrûkeler, Arşivler ( İstanbul: Libra Yayıncılık, 201 4), 98 -99.

148

T he content of th e o fficial rejection letter is as follows: İlgi sayılı yazınız ekinde gönderilen Çiçek İLENGİZ
isimli kişiye ait başvurunu n incelenmesi sonucu ; Hastanen iz de teda vi görmüş olan Hü seyi n TATAR isimli şah sın
kişisel sağlık verilerinin Hasta Hakları Yönetme liğinde belirtilen ma hremiyetin koru nması ilkesi kapsamın da
olması, bu mahremiyetin b edensel ve zihinsel mah remiyeti içermesi ve ilgili ha sta Hüseyin TATAR ' ın ölümü nün
bu ma hremiyetin bozulma sı hakkını vermeyeceği h ususlarına b inaen, hasta dosya sındaki bilgilerin bilimsel
çalışma da olsa açıklanama yacağı kanaatin e varılmıştır.
As a result o f th e exa min atio n of the app lication belon ging to Çiçek İLENGİ Z , it is dec ided that the per sonal
health data o f Hüseyin TATAR, wh o has bee n treated in our hospital, is within the sco pe of the princip le of
privacy protectio n specified in the Patient Rights Re gulation. T his regu lation inc ludes phys ical and mental
privacy and the dea th of the concerned p atient Hüseyin T ATAR will not gi ve the right to violate this p rivacy,
although it is asked for a scie ntific study. T ranslation mine.
Document number 37445697 /640 issued by the Elazığ İli K amu Hastaneleri B irliği Genel Sekreter liği: signed b y
the secretar y general Uz m .Dr. Latif Üstünel.

contextualize these stories of natural disaste r. W hen I asked about the recordings of Şe ywuşen’s
funera l and the pl ans of his statue — which had been archived b y Mazlum Arslan, the ma y o r of
Tunceli (1994 –99) who organized the funeral of Şe y wuşen and commissioned the statue —
Şahin’s response was telling. W ith a smile on her face she said, “Haven’t you had enou gh of
flood and fire sto ries [in the archives], if not I can give y ou mo re”

149

and she told a story of a
fire, telling me indirectl y that what was archived by Ar slan during his may o ralty had been lost.
By ref err ing to the Turkish state’s repertoire o f st ories of flood and fir e to explain the partial
destruction of archives containing documents related to c ontested issu es, Şahin made an
implicit analogy b etwe en the practices of archiving of the Turk ish state and those of th e
municipality.
Juxtaposing the discourse and practices on archives and archiving Me ltem Ahiska
conceptualizes the p roblem of the arc hivin g in T urkey as a governmental policy rather than a
technical deficienc y . While on the one han d the Turkish state holds on to the rhetoric that
“arc hives are essential. One who does not have a past cannot proceed into the future!”, on the
other hand it remains, at best, indifferent to the material conditions of arc hives and th eir
continuous destruction. D estroy ing archives as a poli cy bequeath s the histori cal hole to the nex t
ge nerations. L eaving behind suc h holes as inh eritance also mutil at es memory, dis abling it fr om
answering toda y’s questions.

150

I n her historical ethnography o f Dutch colonialism, Ann Stoler
introduces archives not as things but ar chiving as a process. She frames archives as condensed
sites of epistemologica l and poli tical anxieties rather than as places cont aining skew ed and
biased sources.

151

The stories of flood and fire in Dersim express how the anxieties of archiving
the past is not limited to state archives and diffused into different institutional archiving
practice s. The normalization of the destruction of archives is telling o f the everyday practice o f
constructing historical ho les in the collec tive memor y .
While the archive of the mental hospital in Elazığ and the municipal archive in Dersim
center were not accessible, local newspapers covering the period from the 1960s to the end of
the 1990s offer li ttle more than mainstream nationwide news. The y cont ain no information
about Şey wuşen, whose funera l was one of the best -atte nded funerals in the region and whose
statue was erected in the cit y center. F rom the local ne wspaper Halkın Sesi published during
the 1970s and 1980s we learn about economic hardship and unemployment in the region, the

149

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Edibe Şahin, March 2014 .

150

Meltem Ahıska, “Arşiv Korkusu ve Kara kaplı Nizami Be y: Türkiye’de Tar ih, Hafıza ve İktidar ”, in
Türkiye’de İ ktidarı Yeniden Düşünmek , ed. K. Murat Güney ( İstanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 2009).

151

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: E pistemic Anxieties an d Colonial Commo n Sense (P rinceton:
Princeton Universit y Press, 2009 ), 20.

lives of Dersimis who went to Europe and we receive info rmation about local shops. W hile
issues published during the 1970s contain some critical voices, these disappear aft er the 1980
coup and thereafter wha t we have is mostl y generic news a bout the world and Turke y .
An alternative sourc e helping to grasp the socio-p olitical and economic sit uation in the
region comprises the journals of hometown associations

152

which started to spread in the
metropolises of Turkey during the 1990s. Dersimis who migrated to Turkey’s big c ities
established these associations to buil d solidarity with each other and to mak e visible the poli tical
situation in their hometown during the pe ak of th e mili tary clashes between the PKK and the
Turkish Armed Forces.

153

Along with the news items that appeared in the mainst rea m
newspapers, the journals of Dersim hometown associations helped me to depict the socio -
political atmosphere of the region during the 1990s. Unfortunatel y , the Dersim hometown
association in Berlin, Dersim Kulturgemainde Berlin, which welco mes visitors with
Seywusen’s photo on its wall, doe s not have an archive of journals published in G erma n y . But
its members a ged 30 — 8 5 years c arr y with them the knowledge of political organiz ation in
Germany. B y attendin g the commemoration ceremonies of inciden ce s of state violence alon g
with cultura l events organized by the Dersim Kulturgemainde I h ad the chance to obs erve how
memories attached to state violence are mobiliz ed to make poli tical demands. Through
participant observation in the Dersim Kulturgemainde I also had a b etter grasp of how
emotional attachment to state violenc e incidents affec ts cultural production.

152

Hem ş eri Dernekleri ( hometown as sociations) refers to asso ciations for p eople originating in the same city,
village or to wn. They sp read in Turke y’ s big cities d ue to internal m igration. T he hem ş eri associations b ecame
important center s for urban po litical mobilizat ion for Alevis starting from the 1970s and for Kurds in the 1980 s
and 199 0s. For a detailed d isc ussion on ho m eto wn associati ons of Kurdish migrants see Ayşe Betül Çelik. "“I
miss my village !”: forced Kurd ish migra nts in Ista nbul and their r epresentati on i n associatio ns ." New
perspectives on Turkey 32 (2005): 137 - 163.

153

[The Bo ard of Directors], “Haydi Görev Başına”, Dersim, ( September 19 95:1), 3 - 4.

Figure 2: A photo of Şeywuşen hangs on the wall of Dersim Kulturgemainde in Berlin
As a response to the sy stematic destruction of institutional and state arc hives, private eff orts to
document the past and th e present offer substantial resource s to engage with the contested and
silenced history of Turkey . In a context where available state documentation on the reg ion is
dominated b y descriptions of militar y clashes pr oduced from the state’s perspective , p rivate
archives be come sit es for producing truth claims. I n other wor ds, the e fforts invested in private
archives are mostly mot ivated b y revealin g the truth about the silenc ed hist ory and culture of
the region. For instan ce, thanks to the oral histor y projects and documentaries of the incidents
of 1937 – 38, the argument legiti mating the Turkish state’s intervention in the region was ne g ated
in the growin g literature.

154

Those projec ts revealed the fact that there was no uprising that had
to be suppressed a s th e T urkish state had claimed. This also changed publi c views of the 1937 –
38 incidents and in the absence of the o fficia l recognit ion of state crimes, the mili tary camp aig ns
of the period started to be fr amed as genocide

155

rather than as military campaigns a g ainst an
uprising.

154

For the oral history works see Özgür Fındı k, Kara Vagon: Der sim - kırım ve Sürg ün [Black Wagon: Dersi mi -
c ide and Exile] (İ stanbul: Fam Ya yinlari, 2012), Ce m al Taş, Dağları n kayıp anahtarı: Dersi m 1938 anlatıları
[T he L ost Ke y o f Mountains: The Narr atives of Dersim 1938] (İstanbul: Iletisim Yayi nlari, 2016); B ülent
Bilmez, Gülay Ka yacan and Şükrü Aslan, Bellek lerdeki Dersi m ’38 [ Dersim ’38 in Memor ies] (İstanbul: Iletisim
2015.

155

Bilgin Ayata a nd Serra Hakye m ez , “The AKP’s En gagement with T urk ey’s P ast Crimes: An Analysis of PM
Erdoğan’s ‘Dersi m Apolog y,’” Dialectica l Anthropo logy 37, no. 1 (March 2 013): 131 – 4 3,; Bülent Bilmez,
“Sözlü Tar ih ve Belgesel Film Aracılı ğıyla Bir Kı y ı mla Yüzleş m e k ve Hesaplaş mak,” in K ara Vagon: Dersim-
Kırım ve Sü rgün , by Özgür Fındık (İsta nbul: Fam, 2012) , 7 – 46; Ze ynep Türkyilmaz, “Mater nal Colonialism and
Turkish Wo m a n’s Burden i n Dersim: Educati ng the ‘Mountain Flo wers’ of Dersi m ,” Jour nal of Women’s
History 28, no. 3 (2016): 162 – 86.

This irreconcilable historical narrative of Dersim in 1937 – 38, and subsequent incidences
of state violence in the region, has, unsu rprisingly resulted in the comm on view that stat e
archives and histor y —that is, “the r egister of the official truth”

156

— are no m ore than a lie. In
this contex t, history means onl y the of ficial knowledge of “what happened” detached from the
“knowledge of that process.”

157

However, “history can only be meaningful when activel y
appropriated b y memories in the present.”

158

I n cont exts where history does not provide tools
to critically gro und speci fic experiences, “not only history and historicit y but also the claims of
truth and justice” are impaired.

159

This leads to a major obstacle. Memor y is c hallenged by the
ease with which it is depoliticized and made to lose its potential to form arguments around
political justice b y being pushed int o the private realm of nostal gia about the past.

160

I n other
words, by being pushed into the private realm, memory can be easil y framed as a reminder of
the past, which can b e brou g ht into the pre sent only in the form of nost algia. Th e
irreconcilability of mem ory and histor y leads to a conflict b etwee n collective and national
time,

161

whe re the latter —framed as a “homogeneous e mpty ti me upon whic h the biog r aphy of
the Turkish nation could be written”

162

— is imposed onto the sil ence d and e rased memor y of
the members of the nation.
In this blurr ed ground of histor y and memor y, I had the ch anc e to spend almost a year
in the private archive of Kemal Kahraman, a musician who has collect ed l aments, folk poems,
folk song s, sayings and expressions in the Kirmancki language since late 1980s. He was one of
the fir st people to inte rview eld erly Dersimis not only about the politicall y c ontested history of
the region but also about their every d ay li ves, from therapeutic and devotional practice s to
friendship and we ddings. In that s ense, working i n his archive w as like entering the cultural,
political and spiritual cosmology o f Dersim fr om a door situated in Berlin. Kahra man ’s library
contained most of the books published on Dersim and in the Kirmancki language while his
archive includ ed a wide range of material from recordings to newspaper clips, to personal notes
to the drafts of the booklets of his albums. Placing oral histor y accounts and memor y at the
intersection of the individual and the cultural, I do not take it “as a separate r ea lm from

156

Melte m Ahiska, "Occ identalism and Registers o f Truth: T he Politics of Archives in Turke y." New
Perspectives on Turkey 34 (2006): 9 -30, 24.

157

Michel-Rolph T rouillot, S ilencing the past: Power and th e production of history (Be acon Press, 1995), 5.

158

Ahiska, "Occ identalism and Registers of T ruth“, 27.

159

Ahiska, "Occ identalism and Registers of T ruth“, 28.

160

Esra Öz y ürek, Nostalg ia for th e Modern: S t ate Secu larism and Eve ryday Politics in Turkey ( Durham: Duke
University Pr ess, 2006)

161

Leyla Neyzi, “G ülümser's Story: Life Hi story Narratives, M emory And B elonging in Turke y ,“ New
Perspectives on Turkey , (Spr ing 1999 ):1 -26, 2.

162

Ayşe Öncü, “T he Banal and the S ubversive: Politics of Language on T urkish Television.” European Jo urnal
of Cultural Studie s (2000:3) 296 – 318, 299.

authorized domains of knowledge, ” but inste ad “itself constituted through h istorically specific
cultural knowledges.”

163

In that sense, in de ciphering the sources and makin g use of them I di d
not use diff ere nt filters for state documentation and or al histor y accounts. Instea d, I
contextualized them in their conditions of produc ti on.
While m y archival re search helped me to situate the stor y o f Şeywuşen in its conte x t,
the oral histor y inte rviews I conduct ed helped me to create his biograph y . When I started m y
PhD I had alread y cond ucted 27 semi-structured int erviews as the b asis of m y MA thesis.
Between March 2015 an d September 2018, I cond ucted five months of fiel dwork in Dersim. I n
total, I have 53 or al hist ory interviews conducted in diffe rent cities of Turkey and German y:
Dersim (25), Elazığ (3), Erzincan (3 ), Istanbul (4), B erlin ( 15 ) and Rüsselsheim (3). Their
length varies between on e and six hours. Along with these recorded inter views, I had several
unrecorded conv ersa tions at different field sites such as the c emete r y where the grave o f
Şeywuşen is sit uated, the surroundings of th e statue of Şe y wuşen , the cemevi of central Dersim,
sacre d places ( jiara ) in Dersim, and the Dersim Kulturgemainde in Berlin. These number more
than 40. W hile onl y 15 of the recorded intervie ws I h ad were with female interlocutors, m y
fieldwork notes are dominated b y unrecorded unstructured interviews with women in different
field sites, especiall y in sacred places. This reflects the wa y in which sacred places in Dersim
are la rge l y fre quented by female groups, while official settings and publics spaces ar e
dominated by men.
Reading the dissertati on
This dissertation follows a chronologica l narrative and is in five main parts. Chapter I unpacks
the historical references that appear in the n arratives about Şe y wuşen ’s m adness such as the
Armenian Genocide (191 5 – 17 ), the Elazığ M ental Hospital (established in 1925) and th e
Dersim Genocide (1937 –38). It unfolds the history of the Ela zığ Mental Hospital where
Şeywuşen w as hospi talized b y his family in the 1 960s, contextua lizing it within the history of
psyc hiatr y . An aly zing the discourses surroundin g the two incid ents of genocidal violence and
the ps y chi atric thinking o f the time, it reveals differ ent components of racializ ation. The chapter
examines the makin g of Dersim as a pr oblem-space and the solut ions tha t were provided to
solve this problem b y the central governments of the Ottom an Empire and the Turkish R epublic.

163

Gillian Swanson, “Memory, Subjectivity and Int imacy: the Histor ical Transfor m atio n of the Mo dern Self and
the Writing of Female Autobio graphy.” In Me mory and Methodology, ed . Susannah Radsto ne (Oxford: Ber g,
2000), 111 -132, 112.

Chapter II illust ra tes the process b y which Şe y wuşen became a popular and well-known
madman durin g the late 1960s, a period when Tu rkey witnessed mass political mobilization.
Contextualizing oral hist ory a cc ounts depicting Dersim during the 1960s and 1970s when it
became an important cen ter of le ftist mobilization, the chapter off ers a background picture o f
the streets where Ş eywuşen started to live. Putt ing together the narrated reasons for Şe ywuşe n ’s
madness, the chapter fra mes those narratives as the spectrum of “plausible reasons” for going
mad in Dersim. Anal y z ing the narrated reason s for his madness, the chapter initiates a
discussion of failed masculinit y and shows that narratives about Şe y wuş en’s madness keep
together differe nt la y e rs of otherness that have been attributed to De rsim.
Chapter III depicts a transformation in the way Şeywuşen was perc eived in the post-
1980 coup pe riod. It cont extualizes thi s shift within changes in the socio -political atmosphere
after the coup d’état. Unpacking the holi ness of Şeywuşen , the chapter expands on its
ambiguities. An aly z ing the prophecies, mira cles and drea ms attributed to Ş ey w uşen , the chapt er
puts forward that the divi nity attributed to Şeywuşen transgresses the exist ing hierarchies of
Dersim Alevism. Analy z ing the kind of holiness att ributed to Şe y wuş en, the chapter discusse s
how holiness ge nerates ways of creative engag ement with the ungrievable loss of Dersim.
Chapter IV depi cts the memorialization of Şe y wuşen in the cit y center following his
death in 1994. I t unpacks the s y mbolic meaning of the first statue inaug urated after the statue
of Mustafa Kemal . Con textualizing the inau g uration of the statue o f Şe y w uşen within the
political atmosphere of th e post -1980 coup wh en the mi litary conflict between the PKK and the
Turkish armed forces peaked, it analy z es the limits of the sa y able in the public spa ce of Dersim
in the 1990s. I t compares the memory re g imes for ged by the statue of Şe y wu şen with the statue
of Seyy id Rıza ( erected in 2010 b y th e pro-Ku rdish municipalit y ), the s y m bol of resistance to
the Dersim Genocide. With this comparison, it initiates a dis cussion about the discourses of
spatially e mbodied trauma and healing, which wa s mobilized b y p ro-Kurdis h municipalities in
the 2000s and illustrate the shift in reg imes of public grieving.
Chapter V focuses on the tensions between rituals and practice s related to holy-madmen
and the off icial place of worship for Alevis in Turkey , namel y the cemev i . Starting with a short
discussion of the place of the cemevi in the stru gg le for recognition of Alevism as a reli gion in
Turkey, the chapt er unpa cks what has bee n left outside the instit utional framing o f Alevism.
Throug h a co- reading of the Yeşil Evli y a ziyareti (Green Awli y a S acred Place) a th era peutic
site curing mental instabilities , and the practices that occur at the graves of hol y -madmen, the

chapter unpacks different understanding o f madness in the Dersim belief cosmolog y . Through
the analysis of the therapeutic power of sacred pl aces, the chapter initi ates a discussion on the
conceptualization of sec ularism in Turke y .

CHAPTER I . CREATION OF O THERNESS: DIFFERENT PHASES
OF STATE VIOL ENCE IN THE CREAT ION OF DERSIMI
IDENTITY

You came to the ri ght place to work o n madness [lau ghing]. […] T he [Munzur] River flowing next to
us ha s witnessed all the po ssible atro cities that a state can commit. W e all d rink its w ater and believe
that it is hol y . What the holi ness of the river spreads, is nothing o ther than w itne ssing [this violence].
… I don’t find Seyyid H üseyin that sp ecial , I a m sorr y [laug hing]. […] Who can carry this burden? …
Did you tal k to I bo

164

alr eady [laughi ng ]? He asks the Munz ur [River] to m ake snow d uring summer.
[…] He do es it every s ummer. All of us are waiting for so mething to happen … so mething to change.
[…] But all the y d o is build a dam acros s our holy river.

165

Murat (41) was a self-id entified communist working as an ambulance dr iver in Dersim . He
interpret ed Ş eywuşen ’s li fe path as an ordinar y one for p eople living in Dersim. For inhabitants
of the region “ who witnessed all the possi ble atrocities that a state could c ommit” what coul d
be more normal than losing it ? While Murat did not temporall y lo ca te the act of witnessing state
violence, b y s aying “we a re waitin g something to happen… something to change” he und erline d
the unchanging position of the witness in the face of continuous state-sponsored violence. The
relationship he c onstruct ed betwee n the holiness of the Munz ur River and t he act of witnessing
not onl y re pre s ents the w idespre ad attribution of holiness to natural features in the region but
also the equa tion of the inha bitants of Dersim with its landscape. I n other words, it is not only
Dersimis but also Dersim as a region that is und er continuous attack b y s tate power. This can
take the form of construc ting dams ov er the hol y Munzur River or buil ding police stations on
jiaras , places that ar e loc ally considered hol y sites. Building dam s

166

and police stations without
considering local belie fs have been amon g the pr actices of the stat e as it has sought to “ b ring
civilization ” to the region since the late Ottoman period.
This cha pter aims to hist oricize this sense of continuous state violence b y f ollowing the
key reference points in Şe y wuş en’s life stor y. As briefly m entioned in the Introduction and
discussed in the next ch apter in detail, the two events of genoc idal violence that pla y ed a
formative role in the consolidations of identities in Anatolia are n arrated as reasons for
Şeywuşen’s madness. As one who lost it , Şe y wuşen was hospitaliz ed in the Elazığ Mental

164

Let- It - Snow Ibo (Kar y a ğsın Ib o) is one of the well -kno wn co ntem porar y madmen of Ders im. He is known
for his wish that it w o uld snow and for asking for s mall amounts of m o ney. He is take n care o f by t he inhabitants
of Dersim. Unlike Şe ywuşen he is not att r ibuted holiness.

165

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Murat i n Dersim, April 2014 .

166

An early exa m ple is from 1861 wh e n the m ar shal o f Erzurum, Semih Paşa, and İs mail Hakkı Paşa planned to
build repo sitory pools alo ng with Dersim to br ing civil izatio n to the region. Faik B ulut, Dersim Ra porları ,
(İstanbul: Evren sel Basım Yayın, 201 3), 85.

Hospital which was founded in 1925, b etween two genocidal events. Elazığ, the clos est cit y to
Dersim, was one of the biggest deportation hubs during the Armenian G enocide in 1915 and a
military base during the Dersim Genocide in 1938. The chapter contextualizes the establish ment
of a mental hospital in Elazığ within a history of demarcation and violence.
In the following se ctions, I will e laborate on how diff erence was detected and g overned
by the Ottoman and Turkish states throug h an examination of the re ports produced before each
ge nocide. Anal y z ing kn owledge production about the reg ion, I aim to show that ph y sical
violence cannot be con sidere d separatel y fr om the epistemic violence that also occurred .
Tracing this epistemic violence, which has shaped not only the idea of Dersim but also the
identities of Dersimis, allows us to grasp th e nature of the otherness that is attributed to the
region. After discussi ng knowledge production a bout the re gion, I will conclude the c hapter by
elaborating on th e contribution of the Elazığ Menta l Hospital to the discourses of oth erne ss
attached to Dersim.
Defining the injury of Dersim
Since the late Ottoman period, the domain o f k nowledge about Dersim has been strictl y
delineated around certain recurring themes: remoteness, primitivism, hard- to -categorize
devotional prac tices, different ethnic characteristics from the rest of the Kur dish region,
unruliness, a nd belonging to a different time period.

167

The geography of Dersim is a r ecurring
theme both in state documentation and in the acc ounts o f tr aveler s, missionaries and
anthropologists. Sit uated in the Kurdish region of eastern Turke y , Dersim is bordered b y the
Euphrates to the north and west, and the Murat R iver in the south. The fac t of being en circ led,
by mount ains and the Munz ur, Harcik and Peri R ivers, which join the Murat River at the
region’s southern border, sets Dersim ge ographicall y an enclosed part of the Kurdish region in
Turkey.

168

During the Ottoman period, the southern parts of D ersim, including Ç emiskezek,
Pertek and Maz g irt, were tra de center s c ontrolled by local representatives of the centra l
authority. However, the a rea named Iç Dersim (Inner Dersim) has be en more difficult to reach
compared to other parts. For instance, in a 1933 gendarmerie report, eastern and western Dersim
are described a s divi ded by the Munzur River pr eventing p assage be tween two sides during the

167

Özlem Göner, “A Social Histor y of Power and Stru ggle in T urkey : State, Me mory, Movements, and Id entity
of Outsiderness in Der sim”, unpublished PhD thesis su b mitted to the Sociolo gy Depart m ent of the Un iversity of
Massachusetts, 20 12, 107.

168

Nuri Dersimi, Kürdistan Tarihin de Dersim ( Köln: Komkar Yayinlari, 1992 ), 2.

spring snowmelt.

169

The m ain feature of Ic Dersim is its harsh mountainous geograph y which
complicates the establishment of central authorit y in that part of the region. The mountains of
Ic Dersim have b ee n n otorious for hosting s emi -nomadic groups whi ch reject the central
authorities.

170

Figure 3: The Sandjak of Dersim at the beginning of the 20th century

171

However, while for the state inaccessibilit y was his torically the p rimary obstacle to establishing
its power, for D ersimis the mountains are a hol y refu ge . In most of my interlocutors’
imaginations Dersim is a place whose mountains we re and sti ll are open to the oppre ssed of the
region. Nuri Dersimi ( 1893 – 1973), a significant fi gure in the emergence of Kurdish
nationalism, attaches high importance to the mountains of Dersim and ar gues that they shap e
the culture of the region: he a rgues that the mountains shaped Dersim as a shelter and Dersimis
as people who host refugees. I n his book Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim (Dersim in the Histor y
of Kurdistan ) he elaborates on the significance o f the notion of baht : “[I n Dersi m] for a house
owner ( ev/konak sahibi ) giving a shelter to a refugee is a duty . Dersimis c all it baht [fortune,

169

T he report w a s originall y p ublished in 19 33 by the Gendarmerie General Command ( Jandarma Gene l
Müdürlüğü) w ith a sta mp on it showing that it was secret [ gizli ve zata mahsustur ]. Izzetddin Çalışlar, who
acquired the rep ort from his grandfat her, made the report a vailable. T he copy I referred here is ed ited by Çalışlar.
İzzedd in Çalış lar, (ed .) Der sim Raporu, (Istanbul: İletişim Ya y ı nları, 201 0), 23.

170

Ahmet Keri m Gültekin, Tunceli’de Sünni Olmak: Tu nceli Pertek’te Ulusal ve Yerel Kimlik Öğ elerinin
Etnolojik Tetkiki (Istanbul: Ber fin Yayı nları, 2010) , 37.

171

“Maps | Vila yet of Mamuratul Aziz - Harput : Ho usham ad y an - a P rojec t to Reconstru ct Ot to m an Armenian
To w n a nd Village Life,” acces sed July 20, 20 19,
https://www. houshamadyan.org/en/ m ap otto man empire/v ilayetofmamuratulazizharpu t.html.

destiny ] . People who do not use the right of the baht and refuse to open the doors of their house
to refugees are conside red bahtı yitik (ill- fated).”

172

I begin b y unp ac king the heavil y loaded identit y markers used to describe the people
inhabiting Dersim. Although some of the ir anal y tic al categories seem neutr al (such as remote
and inaccessible), the y are products of a c erta in historical associations that has been c irculating
over centuries. The interest in defining and cate gorizing the people of Dersim goes back to
1800, when Ottoman state documentation, accounts of travelers, missionaries and
anthropologists contributed to the saturation of the identity con cepts applied to the region. This
occurred into two somew hat distinct ways: w hile i n western accounts th e difference attached to
the reg ion was de fined through similarities with the write rs’ own c ult ure, it was the opposite in
Ottoman state documentation.
Dersim is the onl y Kurdish-Alevi dominated regi on in Turke y toda y . While there is no
official census count sh owing its ethnic and religious diversit y , it is estimated that Alevis
comprise between 10 to 2 0% of the population of T urkey.

173

There are currently three dominant
languages spoken in the region: the Kirmancki dialect of Kurdish, which is also called Zazaki-
Dimilki; the Kurmanci di alect of Kurdish; and Turkish. Kurdish speakers o f Kirmancki ar e also
known as Zaza, however this term has acquire d some historical baggage . Dersim is home
mostl y to Kirmancki-speaking Alevis (Alevi-Zaza), like its neig hboring cities of Bin göl, Sivas,
Malaty a, Maraş, E rzurum and Muş, while Di y arbakır is p redominantly home to Şafi -Sunni
Za zas.

174

The term Kırman c is used as a self-descriptor b y Alevi-Zaza from Dersim. Although
Alevi-Zaza and Şafi -Zaza are not dero ga tor y identit y terms, political tensions between the PKK
and Zaza nationalism , which arose in the 1990s and claim ed to be a “distinct people or even a
distinct nation” bas ed on the “distinct Z aza vernacular , ”

175

the t erm “ Z azaki, ” refering to the
language, has become ass ociated with Zazaism. Moreover, since Z azaism was subtl y suppo rted
by th e Turkish Armed Forces during the 1990s t o weaken the influence of the PKK,

176

using
the term Zazaki to refer to the language, or Zaza for the ethnicity, is even more problematic.
Both Turkish and Kurdish nationalists have tri ed to make the Dersimi identit y a part of their

172

Dersimi, Kürd istan Tarihinde Dersim, 41.

173

Reha Çamuroğlu, Değişen Ko ş ullarda A levilik, (İstanbul: Kap ı Yayınları, 2004) , 98.

174

Erdal Gezik, Dinsel ve Etnik ve Politik Sorun lar Baglaminda Alevi Kürtler ( Ankara: Kalan Ya yınları, 2000) ,
16.

175

Michiel Leeze nberg, “Kurdish Alevis a nd the Kurdish Natio nalist Move ment in the 1990 ,” in Turkey’s Alevi
Enigma : A Comphrehensive Ove rview , J. White and Jongerden Leid en, (Boston: Brill, 2 003), 204.

176

Leezenberg, “Kurdis h Alevis and the K urdish Nationalist M ovement in the 1990 ,” 205. Munzur Çem, Dersim
Merkezli Kürt Alevîl iği: Etnisite, Din i İnanç, Kültür ve Diren iş. ( İstanbul: Vate Ya y ınevi, 2 009), 557 -58. Cuma
Çiçek, Ulus, Din , Sınıf, Türkiye‘ de Kürt Mutaba katının İnşası . (İstanbul: İletişi m Yayınlar ı, 20 15), 178.

own narratives: the Turkish state has tried to prove that the Kurdish and Zaza languages are
essentially Turkish,

177

while the Kurdish movement tried “to convince the Alevi Kurds that they
really were Kurds and n othing else . ”

178

On the other hand, the Zazaism ideology dreams of
Za zaistan, which is compos ed of Za za -speaking p eople.

179

To distance myself from these
loaded terms, therefore, I use “ Dersimi ” to refer to people from Dersim a nd “ Kirmancki ” to
refer to the language they speak.
Religious terms are equall y complicated. Th e terms Kızılbaş , heterodox, Alevi, and
pagan have b een used b y western trav eler s a nd a nthropologists as we ll as Ottoman and Tur kish
state officials to describe the religious prac tices of the population. Since the earl y 20 th centur y ,
Alevi has been the umbr ella term for the “endogamous, socio -religious c ommunities found
mainly in Anatolia ”

180

who were hist orically referred to as Kızılbaş . W hile Alevi is a self-
identification, Kızıl baş has been used as a pejorative label denoting a “m oral and r elig ious
deviance” of groups and individuals who are haphazardly identified.

181

There is a tendency
among the Kurdish-Alevis of De rsim to embrace the n egative connot ations of the term,
particularly the rebellious characteristics associated with it, and identif y themselves as
Kızılbaş .

182

Alevism in Dersim has often been defined in terms of religious sy ncretism, with
severa l strata: Z o roastrian, Christian and Muslim. Howe ver, some anthropologists interpr et the
use of the term “ syncretic ” to define the devotional practice s taking place i n Dersim as a form
of epistemic violence. For example, Dilşa Deniz states that while no one ever talk s about
monotheistic religions a s s y nc retic, “th e reli g ions which ar e not belon ging to powerful
states/nations are constantl y defined in this wa y . This makes those [ monotheistic religions]
defıned as the original [ asli ] and the others as mi x ture of this and that therefore not valuable,
insignificant.”

183

To dist anc e my self from the ac ademically roote d practic e of categorizing and
labeling against the interlocutor’s narrative, I use the term “ Dersim Alevism ” to refer to the
devotional prac tices I analyze.

177

Martin van Bruinesse n, “As lı nı İnkar Eden Hara m zadedir! The Deb ate on the Ethnic Identit y of the Kurdish
Alevis,” in Syn cretistic Religi ous Communities in the Near East , ed . K. Kehl- Bodr ogi, B Kellner -Heinkele & A.
Otter- Baujen (Le iden: Brill, 1 997).

178

Michiel Leezenber g, eds., “Kurdish Alevi s and the Kurdish Nationalist Move ment in the 1990 ,” in Turkey’s
Alevi Enig ma: A Compreh e nsive Overview , J. W hite and Jongerden Leiden, (B oston: Brill, 2 003), 204.

179

Leezenberg, “Ku rdish Alevis an d the Kurdish Nationa list Movement in the 1990,” 200.

180

Markus Dressler, “Alevīs”, in Encyclo paedia of Islam , THREE, Ed ited by: Kate Fleet, Gud run Krämer, Denis
Matringe, John Na was, Everett Ro ws on. Cons ulted online o n 09 July 2019

181

Dres sler, “Alevī s”.

182

David Shankla nd, The Alevis in T urkey. The e m erge nce of a secular Isla mic tradition, London 2 003 cited in
Dressler, “Alevīs”.

183

Deniz, RE/Yol Der sim İnanç Sembolizmi, 17 .

To be more precise about what I me an b y episte mic violence I will use t wo examples
where the rituals taking place in Dersim were described based on the framework of syncreticsm.
Syncretic as a n a nal y tical categor y is use d c reativel y in different a ccounts to define Alevism as
practice d in Dersim. For inst ance , for Mol y neux -Seel, a traveler who pub lished his article in
1911, the pagan and Christian elements in Dersimi devotional practices are s y nc retic
character istics : “ All the Seids [ seyyids ] keep with them a certain sti ck and a leather bag about
the uses of which there is some m y ster y, and which are said to be emplo y ed in the performa nce
of certain pa g an rites. H oweve r, the Seids say that the stick is a portion of the rod of Moses,
and the bag an im itation of that ca rried by St. John the B aptist. ”

184

This quote from Mol y neux-
Seel ex emplifies an effor t, found in the accounts o f travel ers, missionaries, a nthropologists and
state offici als to cate gorize devotional practices n ot in its integrity but as a mix ture of ritals
belonging to differe nt belief s y stems.
Another example of thi s effort to show the s yncre ti c characteristics of devotional
practice s c an be found in the work of Mark S y k es, a British anthropologist who studi ed Kurdish
lineages and who wrote in 1908 : “With the exception of Shawak s [a S unni group], all the
Dersim tribes are appare ntly Pagans, who call th emselves Shias . ”

185

Quoting an interlocutor
who said: “ I do not worship God, for a part cannot worship the whole , ” he describe s the
relig ious belief s y st em in Dersim as a mi xture of “ mag ic and nature worship .” He notes however
that Dersimis called themselves “Shia Moslems” and considered Ali the greatest prophe t.

186

While the Alevis worshipp ed Ali, Hüse y in and Moses and celebrated Easter — to ge ther with
Armenians — Sy kes state s that the y i g nor ed the Islamic festival of Ramadan. Alevi rituals are
also said to include: “songs and dan ce s performed secretl y at night in accordance with an
elaborate code.” They w ere “turning towards the east while praying” and went on pilgrimage s
to Armenian monasteries. The monasteries were protected by them against all incursions.

187

Armenian travelers in the earl y 1900s also described how the Kızıl baş , considered infidels b y
the Sunni orthodox y , were equated with Christianit y at the level of governance : “because of
their secret religious practices, the Kızılbaş followers were de emed gâ vurs (infidels) like
Christians.”

188

Until the Armenian Geno cide in 1915, C hristianity w as a n important element of

184

L.Molyneux -Seel, "A Journey in Der sim ." The Geograph ic al Jou rnal 44, no. 1 (1914): 49-68, 66.

185

Mark Sykes, “T he Kurdish Tribes of the Otto man Empire,” The Journal o f the Royal Anthropolog ical
Institute of G reat Britain and Ireland , Vol. 38 (1908): 45 1-486.

186

Sykes, “T he Kurdish Trib es of the Otto m an E m pire,” 4 67.

187

S ykes, “T he Kurdish Tr ibes of th e Otto man Empire,” 421 .

188

Raymond H. Kévor kian, The Armenian Gen ocide: A Complete History (Lo ndon: I. B. Tauris, 2 011), 421.

relig ious life in D ersim, as in other parts of Anatoli a. On the eve of W orld War I , there w ere
107 churche s and 50 mo nasteries in Dersim alone.

189

Western travelers and a nthropologists described the diff ere nces th ey encounter ed o n
Der sim’s spiritual horizon throug h familiarit y , highlig hting wha t the y sa w as similarities
between Christianit y , p aganism and Dersim Ale vism. In the Turkish offic ials’ reports, b y
contrast, the terms Kızılba ş and Alevi were frequently used to describe differences in reli gious
practice s from orthodox Sunni I slam.

190

Both in state reports and in western accounts, we see
efforts to distinguish Dersim Alevism from Anatolian Alevism more broadly.
There are two main components of the particular religious practices of Dersim Alevism:
ocak (hol y lin eage), and the integration of natural elements into spiritual practices. Kinship
relations are woven into the religious pr actice s of the region.

191

I t is believed that in the 12 th
century, nine Alevi hol y lineages, ocak s, “presumably comin g from Khorasan and Daylam
arrived in Dersim. ”

192

Ocak s are organized in to linea ge and their authorities are defined based
on the “sacred blood relation” and they all have a distinct keramet (miracle).

193

There are 100
aşiret s (tribes) in Dersim, most of which reside outsi de the city center, and the ir chiefs ( reis )
are re g arded as reli gious leaders ( pir and se yyid ). Kuresan hol y lineage that Ş eywuşen is coming
from is one of the most important ocak s in the r egion which claims descent fr om the li neag e of
Prophet Muhammed.
The second major ax is defining the specificity of the beliefs and practices in the region
is shaped around th e sac red pla ces, and is called jiara or ziyaret . The integration of natural
elements into the reli g ion becomes visible in the ritual of jiara , which refers to visiting a hol y
place such as the grave o f a hol y person, trees, mount ains, rocks, caves, ri vers, lakes or water
sources.

194

Jiara are not onl y pl ace s for s acrificing an imals, lighting candles and making wishes
but also point s for gathering and socializing. Lighting candles at sa cre d places is one o f the
most widespre ad ritual pra ctices in De rsim. Thursday s are sacred in Alevi belief,

195

a nd on th is
day candles, which s y mb olize the light and the fire, are li t to illumi nate the belie ver ’ s path.

196

189

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 421.

190

Gezik, Dinsel ve E tnik ve Politik S orunlar Bag laminda Alevi Kürtler , 19 - 20.

191

Dilşa Deniz, R E/Yol Dersim İna nç Sembolizmi: An tropolojik Bir Yaklaşım (Istanb ul: İletişim Yayınları,
2012), 15.

192

Annika Tö rne , “Dedes in Dersim: Narrati ves of Violence a nd Persecution,” I ran and the Caucasus 16
(2012): 7 1-95.

193

Deniz, RE/Yol Der sim İnanç Sembolizmi, 44 .

194

Ahmet Keri m Gültekin, Tunceli’d e Kutsal Mekan Kültü (Ankara: Kala n Yayınları, 2 004), 63 - 64.

195

Deniz, RE/Yol Der sim İnanç Semb olizmi , 6 7.

196

Deniz, RE/Yol Der sim İnanç Semb olizmi , 7 6.

As focal points of religious practices, the ji ara t hemselves, the m y ths sh aped around
them and the wa y Dersim is relate to them, are i nvaluable in accounting fo r an Alevi m ental
universe. Generally, the graves of those who are be lieved to have performed miracles ( keramet )
during their li fetimes are considered sacred pl aces and thi s keramet contin ues after death. For
instance while the grave of a seyyid , a descendant of the holy linea g e of Pr ophet Muhammad,
is considered sacred for his/her relatives and tawli b/tallip (disciples), there are also th e graves
of people who ga ined the ir sacredness over time through th e circulation of m y ths. Those m y ths
encapsula te the ir biographical information and provide re ference points in relation to the
contemporary world.

197

Th e socio-political s y st em woven around the amalgamation of religious and tribal
relations largely r egulat ed ever y da y lif e until the Dersim Genocide in 19 38. I n 1931 Naşit
Hakkı Uluğ (1902– 77), a politi cian who was influential in designin g reforms in the Ku rdish
regions, describ es Dersim as follows : “Dersim is a closed countr y ( m emleket ). Althou gh ther e
has been 500 y e ars since it came under the Ottoman rule, they live in th e same wa y the y did
500 y ears a go.”

198

Kazım Karabekir (1882– 1948), the commander o f the ea stern arm y of t he
Ottoman Empire during W orld War I , describes this closed s y stem in a report dated 1918 – 19:
There is much envy a mong d ifferent tr ibes ( a ş iret ) and there is no certainty o n the o bedience of the
rabble ( a vam takimi ). If some tribes ar e m o re courageous, th e others generally submit to the m . On the
contrar y , they are too courag eous, and cold -blooded to w a rds helpless o nes ( çare siz ). T he case s o f
expropr iation, ro bbery and murder a m ong eac h o ther ar e solved i n the assembl y t hey ca ll cemaa t,
formed by those so -called seyyid s and m embers. If t hey cann ot r each an ag ree m e nt, the attacks bet ween
the opp onent trib es continue for lo ng ti me. Yet, in case o f an atte m p t to i m pose discipline [b y the
authorities], the o pponent trib es help each other.

199

The military officer’s report draws a picture of a closed tribal s y stem that solves its internal
problems via it s own assembly, and a tribal structure that comes together against state
interventions but at othe r times has internal prob lems. This idea of s elf-governance throu gh
assemblies composed of locals also appears in Dersimi narratives as a nostalgic element of the

197

Gültekin, Tu nceli’de Ku tsal Mekan Kültü ,

198

Naşit Hakkı Ulu ğ, Derebeyi v e Dersim , (İsta nbul: Kaynak Ya yınları, 2009) , 22.

199

“ Muhtelif aşiretler aras ında çekememezlik fazla olduğu gibi, avam takımın in ağalarına itaatleri muhakk ak
değildir. A şiretlerden bazıları n isbeten cesur ise de, ku vvete karşı genellikle bo yun eğe,rler. Bun a karşılık,
çaresizlere ka rşı pek cesur ve hunhardırlar. Keza a ralarındaki g asp, hırsızlık ve öldürme davaları "ce maat"
dedikleri seyit ve üyelerden olu şan bir mecliste ha llolunur. Şayet u yuşamazlarsa, hasım aşiretle rin yekdiğerine
karşı olan saldırıları uzun mü ddet deva m eder. Lakin ihtiyaç an ında herhangi bir a şiretin tedibine (hizaya
sokulmasına ) teşebbüs olunu r sa, (diğer) hasım aşi retleriyle d erhal arala rındaki düşmanlığı bıraka rak
yekdiğerinin yardımın a koşarlar .” T he report of Kazim Karabekir, d ated 15 Kannunuevvel 1 335 (December
1918 -19) cited in Bulut, Dersi m Rapo rları , 224.

pre-1938 p eriod. Some idealiz e th at pr e-ge nocide time as a p rimitive communist period of
Dersim;

200

others describe it as the perfect form of the Alevi belief system.

201

The backy ard of the e mpire
Due to its geographical characteristics, Dersim could, to some degree, resist the central
authority’s implementation of taxation, conscription, census and land registration and reforms
both before a nd after the Tanzimat period in the mi d 19 th c entury did not achieve their intended
results.

202

This failure led t o more inclusive re forms during the rei g n of Abdülhamit II (1876 –
1909). Since there is a strong continuit y b etween t he Ottoman and the Tur kish state’s approach
to Dersim, I will briefl y elaborate on this first thorough reform which s pecific all y ta rget ed
Dersim. This occurred d uring a time m arked b y the development of the c olonial repertoire o f
Ottoman governmentalit y . In pa ralle l with the colonialist discourses and practices of British
and French g overnance, the Ottoman empire de veloped its own colonial toolkit , imbued with a
mixture of positivist valu es, a nd a drive to centralize state power base d on the Hanefi school of
law and sharia. How ever, unlike the colonial p rac tices of the British and French empires, which
targeted religiousl y and ethnically diverse po pulations outside their territorial bounds, the
Ottoman e mpire’s colonial policies target ed its own Muslim subjects,

203

while religious
minorities were exposed to a different set of governing discourses. Modernization , which began
with the Tanzimat period, m ark ed the start of Ottoman colonialism, which embraced “a set of
imperial practices and discourses which we re premised on the need to induct forcibly
supposedly recalcitrant peripheries int o an age of modernit y. ”

204

In other wor ds, an evolutionar y
notion of time which denies coe valness became a part of Ottoman governance.

205

I n this way ,
the backward, primitive and savage b ecame constit uents for the rational, scientific and civilized
character of the imaginary space of the center; the source of reforms.

206

The Dersim Reforms init iated durin g the rei g n of Abdülhamit II w ere concerned with
such a missi on civilatrice targeting the economic an d social ( içtimai ) d evelopment of the region.

200

From the intervie w I cond ucted w ith Yaşar i n Ankara, January 2016 .

201

From the intervie w I cond ucted w ith Mahmut Ded e in Be rlin, Dece m b er 2017 .

202

Gündoğdu and Ge nç, Dersim'de Osmanlı siyaseti , 27.

203

Selim Deringil, Simgeden Millete: II Ab dülhamid’den Mustafa Kemal’e Devlet ve Millet ( Istanbul: Iletisim
Yayinlari, 20 07), 165 -217.

204

Ussama Makdisi, “Rethinking Otto m a n Imperialis m: Modernity, Violence and t he Cultur al Logic of Ottoman
Reform,” in The E mpire in the City: Ara b Pro vincial Capitals in the Ottoman Empire , ed. Jens Hanssen, T homas
Philipp, and Stef an W eber (Beirut/Würzbur g: Or ient-Institut d er Deutschen Morge nländischen Gesell schaft,
2002), 30.

205

Makdisi, “Rethin king Ottoman I m perialism, 30 .

206

Makdisi, “Rethin king Ottoman I m perialism, 32 .

The main concerns of this mission were: i) preventing w estern powers from interve ning in th e
internal a ffairs of the empi re throu g h the Armenian Question, ii) p reventing r approc hement
between the Arm enian and Kızıl baş communitie s, ii i) a fear of the spread of Alevism and
Kızılbaşlık beliefs i n the region as a threat to Ab dülhamit ’s universal clai m of caliphate , and
iv) fear of Protestant missionary activit y in the region.

207

The problem of ex terna l i ntervention is the most prominent point to appear in reports on
Dersim produced during the reign of Abdülhami t II . The ide a that Anatolia was in need of
reform did not emerg e in the absence of ex terna l pressures.

208

I n the aftermath of the Russo-
Turkish War (1877 – 78 ), at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 De rsim be came part of the Vilayat-i
Sitte (Six Provinces)

209

in which the Armenian population was concentrated. The creation of a
zone for Armenian subj ects of the Ottoman empire envisaged reforms of the securit y forces
( Asakir-i zabitiye ) , the creation of new administra tive units ( nahiye ), the st rengthening of the
judicial sy stem, and the creation of a ne w s y stem of tax collec tion which e xcluded the
ge ndarmerie and police forces in the re g ion.

210

The reform packa g e also envisaged the
participation of the A rmenian community in institutions in which th ey had not pre viousl y been
accepted, such as the gendarmerie, polic e and tax collection.

211

While trying to minimiz e
external pressure, Abdülhamit I I attempte d to prevent the spread of this zone of exception to
other parts of the empire. Despite the pressure of the British government, the accepted reform
packet was not implemented.

212

Meanwhile, raids b y Kurdish groups on Armenians in the
region became a problem, as the y might provide a basis for int ernational intervention.

213

At the
same ti me, whil e some groups w ere raiding Armenian propert y , other Dersimi groups were
allied with the Armenians. Thus, the Ottom an governme nt also wanted to preve nt the growth
of solidarity between different communities.

214

Finally, b y defining religious practices in the
region as archaic and the population as uneducated, the Ottoman gove rnmen t detected potential
for deformation of orthodox I slam and the potenti al danger of conversion to Protestantism.

215

207

Gündoğdu and Ge nç, Dersim'de Osmanlı siyaseti , 33.

208

Koçak, Umu mi Müfettişlikler, 25.

209

Vilayat- i Sitte incl udes the follo w i ng provinces: E rzurum, Sivas, Van, B itlis, Ma’muretü’l -Aziz and
Diyarbekir.

210

Nadir Özb ek, “Policing the Countryside: Ge ndarmes of the Late - Nineteenth -Century Ott om an E m p ire
(1876- 19 08),” Intern ational Journal of Mid dle East Studies 40, no.1 (2008 ).

211

Nadir Özb ek, “Modernite, Tarih ve Ideolo ji: II. Abdülhamid Dö nemi Tarihçiligi Üzerine Bir Degerlendir m e,”
Türkiye Arastirma lari Literatür Dergisi , 2, no.1 (2004), 71 - 90.

212

Özbek, “Modernite, T arih ve Ideoloji, 31.

213

Gündoğdu and Ge nç, Dersim'de Osmanlı siyaseti , 33.

214

Gündoğdu and Ge nç, Dersim'de Osmanlı siyaseti , 31.

215

Gündoğdu and Ge nç, Dersim'de Osmanlı siyaseti , 33.

The I nspectorate-General was found ed during this period to add ress thes e concerns .
This was a regional governance unit, with authority over civilian, militar y , a nd juridic al
institutions and aimed to establish central power in the periphery with all of its civilatrice
force .

216

Even at the end o f the reign of Abdülhamit II, however, British dipl omats WJ Anderson
and Molyneux Seel (1902 and 1911 respectively) noted that the p resence of the c entral
government was limited in Dersim.

217

As the refor ms promised in the Treaty of Berlin w ere
delayed b y postponing st rategies b y the Ottoman g overnment,

218

influenced by n ationalist and
socialist movements in R ussia and in the Balkans, Armenians formed s everal movements and
entered into an armed struggle

219

against the autocratic regime of Abdülha mit II.

220

For the
purpose of this study, however, wh a t is critical is not the failure of the reform ini tiatives but
how th e fa ilures were used to define the problem of Dersim.

Dersim during the Ar menian G enocide
On the eve of W orld W ar I, the province of M a’mure tü’l -Aziz had 270 towns and
villages with a total Armenian population of 1 24,289. It was hosting 242 churches, 65
monasteries and 204 sch ools attended b y 15,632 children.

221

I n the Dersim alone there were
107 churches and 50 monasteries, show ing th at the reg ion was extensively Christian.

222

Although Dersim was in the zone of influence of the Armenian Revol utionary Federation
(ARF), the or ga nization had merel y s ymbolic influence and was limited “to a few dozen

216

Cemil Koçak, Umumi Müfettişlikler, 19 27 -1952 , (İstanbul: İ letiş im, 2003 ), 26.

217

Suat Akgül, Amer ikan ve I ngiliz Raporlari Isigind a Dersim (Istanbul: Yaba Ya yınları, 2009).

218

Raymond Kévor kian, “The Extermination of Otto man Ar men ians b y the You ng T urk Regime (19 15 - 1916) ,“
Online En cyclopedia of Ma ss Violence, [o nline], published on: 3 June, 200 8, accessed 14/ 07/20 19 , p:5.

219

In 1 885, the first Ar men ian p olitical party, the Armenakan wa s founded in Van, a city which was par t of the
Vilayat- i Sitte , the zone o f promised refor ms under the Trea ty of B erlin. Arm enakan w as follo wed by the
foundation of the Re volutionary Hinchak Party i n 1887 in Gene va and the Armenian Revolutionar y Federation
(ARF) Dashnaks utyun in T bilisi in 1890. The Hinchak established secret revolutio nary parties engaged in armed
struggle against the rule of A bd ülh amid II, w hich was follo wed by massacres a gainst A r menians in various towns.
Although in 1908 Ittihad ve Tera kki Cemiyeti (Committee o f Union and Progress, CUP) forced A bdülhamid to
restore the co nstitution of 187 6 w hich p ledged a co nstitutio nal fut ure to the no n-Musli m subjects of the E m pir e,
the massacres o f Armenians onl y intensified.

220

Hans-Lukas Kieser . Iskalan mış barış: Doğu Vilayetleri'nde misyonerlik, etn ik kimlik ve devlet 1839 -1938 .
(İstanbul: İletişi m Yayınları, 20 05), 199.

221

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 381.

222

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 421.

militants whose relationship with the Armenian peasantry w as ambiguous . ”

223

Nevertheless,
the Armenians of Dersim were mostly liquidated in 1915.

224

From the report of Mehmed Talat Pasha ,

225

one of the main perpetrators of the genocide, w e
learn that 97% of the Armenian population of Ma’muretü’l -Aziz in 1914 was missing b y 1917.
In addition, 2,203 su rvivors of th e genocide w ere resettled b y the g overnment in 17 diff ere nt
cities of the empire.

226

According to Talat Pasha’s report, the number of native Armenians in
Ma’muretü’l -Aziz was 70,060 in 1914 while in 1917 this number fell to 0. The report
character izes 2,203 Armenians as native to Ma’muretü’l -Aziz but resettled to cities which far
from Dersim and from each other , such as Ankara, Mosul, Kon y a or Aleppo.

227

Dersim occupies a pe culiar place in the ex perie nce of the Armenian Ge nocide. It appears in the
memoirs of survivors and in state documentation as a refuge for Armeni ans. The Ottoman
province of Ma’muretü’l -Aziz , in which Dersim was located, was in 1915 a “hub or pivot of
the deportations”; almost every convo y of deportees from the regions of Trabzon, Erzurum,
Sivas and the eastern part of Ankara passed thro ugh it .

228

Within the province, however, the
district of Dersim be ca me a “sanctuar y for the A rmenian deportees” passing through the region
due to the relative lack of state control.

229

Some Kurdish families from Dersim refuse d to giv e
up Armenians to the state and instea d help ed them to escape to the Caucasus throug h Erzincan ,
a cit y to the no rth of Dersim .

230

Nuri Dersimi, in his book K ürdistan Tarihinde Dersim (Dersim
in the Hist ory of Kurdista n), re counts seeing 36,000 Armenians take refuge in Dersim or sa ved
by Dersimis during 1915 – 16. According to him , Armenians sta y ed in Dersim until Jul y 1916
wh en the Russian army occupied Erzincan. Arm enians who did not want to join the Russian

223

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 59.

224

Raymond H. Kévor kian & Paul B. P aboudjian, “ Les Arméni ens dan s l'Empire Ottoman à la vielle du
geno cide,” ed. ARHIS (Paris, 1 992), 381 – 2.

225

T alat Pascha w as o ne of the main per petrators o f th e Armenian Geno cide who fled to Germany in 191 8 and
was assassinated in Berlin b y Soghomon T ehlirian as a part o f Operation Ne m e sis. Operati on Nemesis was a
covert op eration in the 1920s b y t he Armenian Re volutionary Feder ation (AFD, Dash naktsutyun) to assassi nate
the Ottoman a nd A zerbaij ani perp etrators of the Armenian Genocide. For more infor m ati on, see
http://www.operati onnemesis. com/

226

Ara Sarafian, [19 17] Talaat Pasha’s Repo rt on the Armenian Gen ocide (London: Gomidas Institute, 20 11),
52.

227

Sarafian, Ta laat Pasha ’s Report on the A rmenian Genocid e , 5 2.

228

Raymond Ké vorkian. The A rmenian genocid e: a complete history . London, (Ne w York: I. B. Tauris, 2011) ,
381.

229

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 382.

230

Kieser, Iska lanmış barış , 5 61. H. Ha y reni, “ Dersimli Er meniler: Çifte Da mg alı Bir Ki mliğin Yaşam
Mücadelesi” De rsiyad , (İstanb ul, 2012) , 10 -31 , 30.

force s sta y ed in D ersim unti l the fighting ended an d later moved to I stanbul, S y ria or the United
States.

231

The ex perie nce of 1915 in Dersim w as also di fferent from other r egions because of
American missionar y activi ties in the province of Ma’muretü’l -Aziz. The presence of the se
missionaries “had a direct influence on the Armenians’ fate” in th e pro vince.

232

Although
American interventions privilege d the survival of Pro testant s, who comprised onl y a small
segment of the Armenian population, the pressu re pushed local governors to elabora te “a
discourse justify ing the violent measures” and the mass crimes that the y oversaw.

233

Although Talat Pasha’s report states that no native Armenian of the province could
escape r esettlement, in th e collective memor y of t oday’s Dersimis it is kno wn that Arm enians
continued to live in sig nificant numbers in De rsim until 1938. Thereafter, conve rsion to
Alevism as a survival str ategy began to spread among survivors o f the A rmenian Genocide .

234

Although remembered in oral hist ories, the existenc e of Dersim Armenians and their
descenda nts has onl y recently e ntered public discussion in Turkey. In 2012 , the Association of
Armenians o f D ersim was founded b y Miran P irg iç Gültekin to uncove r thi s silenced histor y of
Armenians who survive d in De rsim through as similation b y conversio n, name change o r
adoption.
Yet before the wound of the Armenian Genocide could begin to heal, it was followed
by the Dersim Genocide i n 1937 – 38. I n the nex t section, I d escribe knowled g e production prior
to this second ge nocide.
Imagining a city and m aking it happe n: The em erg ence of Tun celi from th e
ashes of Ders im
Dersim is a n ab scess for the Republic. It must be o perated on precisely and a possibility o f a b itter end
should be p revented. — Ha m di B ey’s Report, 1 926
Intense knowl edge production , in the fo rm of reports prepar ed for the c entral authority,
continued after the genocidal violence and provi ded the basis of the Law of Tunceli issued in
1935. This law provided for a series of military operations and resettlement projects. The

231

Dersimi, Kürd istan Tarihind e Dersim, 41 - 2.

232

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 381.

233

Kévorkian, Th e Armenian Gen ocide, 381.

234

Hranouch Kharat yan, The sear ch for identity in Dersi m Part 2: the Alevized Armenians in Der sim, 2014
REPAIR, http://rep airfuture.net/index.p hp/en/identity -stand point- of -armenia/t he-search-fo r-identity- in -dersi m-
part-2-the-alevized -armenians - in -dersi m-armenian .

military ope rations left 13 ,806

235

de ad according to official do cuments out of 60.000 to
70.000

236

of total populatio n along with the res ettelment of 12,000 Dersimis . For Dersimis,
therefore, 1938 has a similar significance to 1915 for Anatolian Armenians : it represe nts both
an end and a beginnin g of a new world.

237

I n thi s section, I will briefly introduce the diverse
discourses produced on Dersim before 1938.
Commissioning reports from the state of ficers an d social scientists for the purpose of
governance was a tradition that the Turkish Republic inherited from the O ttoman Empire afte r
taking power in 1922. Of the 21 officiall y commissi oned and published reports regarding the
Kurdish re g ions, six deal specificall y with D ersim.

238

Ziya Gök alp (1876 – 1 924), considered
the founding figure of modern socio log y in Turk ey , was commiss ioned to observe “ Kurdish
tribes ” in eastern Anatolia in the ea rly 1920s. Do ctor Rız a Nur (1879 – 1942), who s erved as a
deputy of Sinop in the fi rst Parliament, explains wh y h e en courag ed Gök alp to conduct this
research: “I alread y know that those who were called Kurdish toda y are actually Turkish.
However, w e have to teach them this realit y .”

239

In Gökalp ’s book, Dersim appears as a place
of perme ne nt hostilit y ( husumet ) be cause of the mount ainous characteristic s of the re gio n

240

and its Kurdified Shiite Turks.

241

Mülkiye Müf ettisi (civil inspector) Hamdi Be y , wh o wrote his report on D ersim in 1926,
emphasizes the Kurdification of Dersim as a growing problem, urgentl y requir ing a response.
He writes that the possibilit y of implementin g reform in the region can onl y be illusionar y and
describes D ersim as an absce ss whic h needs to be take n out from the nation’s body .

242

Emphasizing the need f or mi litary operations to solve the problem of Dersim, Hamdi Be y
recommends that, durin g the operations, officials should not believe a word coming from
Dersim ’s inhabitants, because the y were ignorant ( egitimsiz ) , poor ( fakir ) and Kurdified, and
therefore easily provoked b y their sh eiks.

243

235

Prime Ministry’s Rep ublican Archives, B aşbakanlık Mua melât Genel Müdürl üğü Evrakı (Direc torate of
Tr ansactions of the P rime Ministry, 030.1 0/111.753.0, 1 No v e mber 1939.

236

Minister of Interior Ş ükrü Kaya presented the n um bers for total population during the disc ussions on the
Tunceli Law in t he parlement. TBMM ZC , no: 288 4, İ: 21, C:1, 2 5 - 12 -1935, 175.

237

Murat Yüksel, “ Ulu s - devletin Der sim’le Te m asi” i n Herke sin Bild igi Sir: Dersim, ed. Sükrü Asla n (Istanbul:
Iletisim Ya y i nlari, 2010 ).

238

Hüseyin Ya yman, Sark Mesel esinden Demo kratik Açılıma: Türkiye’nin Kü rt Sorunu Ha fi zasi ( Ankara:
SETA, 20 11).

239

Ziya Gökalp, Kürt A şiretleri Hakkında Sosyolojik Tetkikler , (Istanbul: Kaynak Ya yınları, 2009), 6.

240

Gökalp, Kürt Aşire tleri Hakkın da Sosyolojik Tetkikler ,52.

241

Gökalp, Kürt Aşire tleri Hakkın da Sosyolojik Tetkikler ,133 .

242

Ya ym a n, Sark Meselesin den Demokra tik Açılıma , 92- 93.

243

Ya ym a n, Sark Meselesin den Demokra tik Acili ma, 93.

Although the governor of Elazığ province, the succeed the Ottoman province of
Mamuretül-aziz, Ali Cemal Be y ’s report was written concurrentl y with Hamdi Bey’s, it offers
differe nt solutions for th e De rsim problem. Ali Cemal B ey, who worked previously in Alevi -
dominated reg ions such as Corum in norther n Ana tolia, agre es with Hamdi B e y about the need
to Turkify the Kurdified inhabitants of Dersim . H owever he writes that un equal treatment b y
Sunni Ottoman governments was at the core of t he problem. I f the un equal treatment we re
brought to an end, the dissolution of sectarian tension could convince Dersim is to be lo y al to
the Turkish Republic. In accordance with others, he proposes resettlement as a solution.

244

In the meantime, Eugene Pit tard’s classic book o n ph y sic al anthropolog y Les races et
l’h istorie (1924) found its place in the librar y of the founder of the Tu rkish Republic, Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk.

245

I n 1927, the Cumhuri y et Halk F ı rkas ı (CHF, Republican People’s Party )

246

defined the Turkish nation as a group of people “speaking the s ame language, unified by th e
same cultural values.”

247

This implies that being Musli m, which wa s the determi ning c haracter
for Ottoman subjects, was insufficient to be considered pa rt of the Turkish nation. As Yunus
Nadi (1879 – 1945), the fo under of the Cumhuriyet Gaze tesi , the official new spaper of the CHF,
declared in 1930, “[b] eing Tu rkish is not merely carr y ing th e identit y card of the Turkish
Republic an y more; it is b eing Turkish in culture, i n ways of living, in lang uage, in thought and,
in heart.” Continuing from Nadi ’s description, Mahmut Esad Bozkurt (1882 – 1943), the
Minister of J ustice at the time, draws a line between Turkish subjects and others as follows : “ I n
this Turkish land, the non -Turkish has onl y on e ri ght: the right to become a s lave to the Tu rkish
nation.”

248

The Law of R esettlement Number 2510 issued in 1934 divided the c ountry int o thr ee
zones, envisaging population movements between them, and was an important step to unify
language within the natio n.

249

The resettlement plans in Dersim were d esigned according to this
law.

244

Faik Bulut, Der sim Raporla ri (Istanbul: E vrensel Basim Y ayim , 200 7), 22.

245

Zafer Top rak, “Atatürk, Eugene Pittard ve Afet Hanim:En B üyük Antrop olojik Anket,” To plumsal Tarih,
205, (2011) : 20- 30.

246

T he People’s Party was establ ish ed duri ng the Congress of Sivas in 1919 as a un ion o f resistance groups
against the occ upation of the Anatolia n territor y o f th e O ttoman Empire. T he party became the unique
representative orga n of the Turkish nation d uring the War of Indep endence (1919 – 23 ). In th e congre ss held in
1935 the party’s n ame was ch ang ed to the Republican P eople’s Party.

247

İsmail Beşikçi,. Tu nceli Kanun u (1935) ve Dersim Jeno sidi , (Istanbul: İsmail Beşi kçi Vakfı Ya yınları, 2013 ),
81.

248

Milliyet Gazete si, September 1 9, 1930.

249

Bil m ez, Aslan & Kayaca n, To plumsal Bellek, Kusaklararasi Aktarim ve Algi: Dersim ‘3 8’i H atirlamak , 31.

In a r eport presented to the Ministr y of I nternal Affairs in 1930, General Inspector
Ibrahim Tali argues for a “military op era tion which will eradicate the problem of Dersim.”

250

He does not sh y awa y from radical solution s and proposes bu rning houses and villages, and
relocating S eyy ids and tribal lea ders to the western part of the country . The problem of Dersim
was important enough to attract Genel Kurma y Baskan ı (Chief of the Army) Fevzi Çakmak to
write a report spe cific ally on Dersim. Makin g de tailed anal y ses of th e villages and followin g
Tali, he su ggests burnin g som e vil lages and resettl ing a considerable part of the population.
However Halis Pasa, a commander who conducted the military op era tion i n Pülümür in 1930,
disagrees with military so lutions. H e proposes conf iscating the guns in Dersim and reor ganizing
the region.

251

Şükrü Ka y a, the Minister of I nternal Af fairs, prepared a repo rt o n Dersim in 1931
following the Chief of the Arm y . Stating that “the government and its i nstitutions, security
force s and courts in Dersim, are not more than an illusion”; he makes a detailed plan for
“clea ning” the region , including militar y operations and the reforms that should follow them.

252

Kaya later playe d an active role in shaping the Tunceli Law issued in 1935.
Thus, the knowled ge production in off icial reports and in sociological research shows
that Dersim was made into a problem to be studied, explained and resolved. Although the tone
of ethnic nationalism gained prominence in th e reports, it remained ambigious, as the
description of the politician Hasan R eşit Tankut (1891 – 1980) suggests. Tankut enlarges th e
frame su ggested b y Göka lp and shapes his a rguments around ethnic ste reot y pes and geographic
determinism in his work on the “ Za za tribes, ” conducted in 1932 – 35:
Entirely a m o untain peop le… T hey co ntain all the characte ristics of pri m itivis m… their e y es will not
allo w pas sage… no m ad s thus vagabonds … Nature cr eated the Zaza as a m ountain creatur e.

253

Along with characteristics directl y linked to geograph y, for Tankut their ethnic identit y also
ascribes to them certain sociocultural and biological characteristics:
The Zaza lies a lot, cheats a lo t. T im id but i ntruding. Accordingly they ha ve al ways bee n d etrimental
and dangero us. Always sp oiled, al w a ys disobed ient. Alt hough t hey a sk for mercy ofte n, they never
show merc y . T hey are m isers. Their me n are very hair y , but not as much as Armenian s.

254

Za za reli g ious practices add to t heir ba ckwardness in Tankut’s narration:

250

Ya ym a n, Sark Meselesin den Demokra tik Acilima , 99- 100.

251

Bulut, Dersim Rap orları , 22 0-250.

252

Ya ym a n, Sark Meselesin den Demokra tik Acilima , 111.

253

Hasan Resit T ankut, Zazalar Üzerine Sosyolojik Tezler (193 2-1935 ) (Ankara: Kalan Yayinlari, 20 00), 22.

254

T ank ut, Zazalar Üze rine Sosyolojik Tezler (1932 -1935 ) , 14- 15.

They d o not have Sharia or rule o f Allah. T hey tend to w orship humans. As a m atter of fact, they all
used to w orship humans. Besi des humans, they worship co nversation, music and alco holic b everages.
An animism of t heir sort….

255

In Tankut’s account D ersim is a neglec ted and di sorderl y place without ro ads or bridges; it is
“a he ave n and a hell.”

256

I n this house of evil, which can be grasped onl y to a certain extent
through rational means, live what he c alls “ Zaza ,” to point out the cultural (l y in g too much,
spoiled, disobedient, dangerous, harmful), biological (hair y ) and social (bac kward, worshipping
humans and objects) diff ere nces. Nevertheless, he ar g ues that the Zazas are actually Turkish.

257

Tankut’s na rra tion o f Dersim and Zazas re flects the ambigious position of the official
reports on the question of “how to deal with difference . ” On the o ne hand , Dersim’s
sociocultural difference was inst rumentalized to prove the superiorit y of Turkishness over the
Za za, Alevi and Kurdish populations. On the oth er, obse rved dif ference was used as a tool to
legitimize the viol ent interve ntions of the state to remind the Zaza of their Turkishness. Whil e
the actual Turkishness of Zazas is perceived as deformed b y prox imity to Kurds and Armenians,
the reports su ggest that it c ould be reconstructed if only the rig ht methods are mobilized. I n this
sense, there are two s et of discourses framing th e treatment of D ersim. T he first claims that
Dersimis are ethnicall y Turkish

258

and through assimilation they could regain what the y have
lost over ti me, i.e. the renaissanc e of Turkishness could start in Dersim. The second one appears
to be constructed against the Turkishness of Dersim inhabitants and fa vor s radical solutions to
eliminate the difference l ocated in Dersim. Althou gh man y tend to explain the Dersim Genocide
through a gradual radicalization towards ethnic nationalism,

259

in m y vie w the seemingly
contradictory nature of these discour ses paved the discursive ground for ge nocidal violenc e.
While there was dispu tes around the “right method s” in those reports, in 1935 the Tunceli
Law was issued without discussion in the parliament.

260

L aw Number 288 5 envisaged the
establishment of the province of Tunceli by merging different dist ricts.

261

Elazığ became the
temporary center of admi nistration until J anuary 1, 1940, and the mi litary campaign to
implement the Tunceli Law was launch ed from here. I t is important to note that when the

255

T ank ut, Zazalar Üze rine Sosyolojik Tezler (1932 -1935 ) , 57.

256

T ank ut, Zazalar Üze rine Sosyolojik Tezler (1932 -1935 ) , 185.

257

T ank ut, Zazalar Üze rine Sosyolo jik Tezler (1932 -1935 ) , 24.

258

Göner, “A Social Hi story of Po w er and Struggle in T urkey”, 8 6.

259

İsmail Beşikçi, Tu nceli Kanun u (1935) ve Dersim Jeno sidi (Istanbul: İsmail B eşikçi Vakfı Ya y ınları, 2 013),
81. Mehmet Bayrak, Alevilik- Kürdoloji -Türkoloji Yazilari 1 973 -2009 (Ankara: Özge Ya yinlari. 200 9).

260

Beşikçi, Tunceli Ka nunu (19 35) ve Dersim Jeno sidi , 81.

261

Pülümür ( w hich belon ged to the province of Erzi ncan) along with the districts Ho zat, Naz im iye, Mazgirt,
Ovacik, Per tek and Çemiskezek ( wh ich belo nged to the pro vin ce of Elazı ğ). B eşik çi, Tun celi Kanu nu (1935) ve
Dersim Jenosidi .

Tunceli Law was issued there was no city called Tun celi in the Turkish Republic. Although
many oth er non-Turkish cit y names we re replaced by Tu rkish names, onl y Dersim was renamed
through a special law. To do so, first an imagined place called Tunceli w as proposed on paper
in 1935. The idea of materializing this im ag inar y p lace was approved b y par liament in 1936 and
the law began to be implemented in 1937 followi ng a so -called uprisin g .

262

Th is framing, of an
“ uprising ,” legitimiz ed a state intervention which left behind a highl y disputed number of dead
bodies. Whil e the numbers provided b y the state documentation is 13,8 06

263

the unoffici a l
estimations are around 40,000 along with the forced resettlement of around 12,000 people of a
total population of about 93,000.

264

Following military clashes, “ without differentiating between
child, mot her, elderly , reach, poor [ …] a population was entirely forced to migrate.”

265

Thos e
who we re forced to migrate were r esettled in different Turkish vil lages bas ed on the rule of one
Dersimi famil y per villa ge.

266

Following the decision of the Fourth General Inspectorate, the
Elazığ Girls’ I nstitute opened a special section for Dersimi girls who were, in words of the
female Turkish missionary Sıdıka Avar , “wild and stubborn in nature . ”

267

Thus, “ the opening
of Tu nceli to civilization” continued in the boarding schools by racializing Dersimi girls.

268

I n
aid of this mission civilatrice girls who had lo st their parents durin g t he massacres were
distributed among the genera ls.

269

In 1937, the genocidal violence was celebrated in th e
newspaper Cumhuriyet by its chief editor Yunus Nadi: “The problem nam ed Dersim for years
is dead now and has become a part of history.”

270

Uprising or N ot? T he Inciden ts of Dersim 1937 – 38?

Until recentl y the “ uprising ” and the subsequent “ mili tary campaign ” to supp ress it comprised
the generic explanation of the events of 1937 – 38. This narrative was not only promoted and

262

Beşikçi, Tunceli Ka nunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi , 42.

263

Prime Ministry’s Rep ublican Archives, B aşbakanlık Mua melât Genel Müdürl üğü Evrakı (Direc torate of
Tr ansactions of the P rime Ministry, 030.1 0/111.753.0, 1 No v e mber 1939.

264

Hüseyin Aygün , De rsim 1938 ve Zorunlu Iskâ n: Telgraf lar, Dilekçeler , Mektup lar , Fotoğrafla r (Ankara:
Dipnot Ya y ı nları, 2009 ), 127.

265

Aygün, Dersim 1938 ve Zorunlu Iskân , 127.

266

Sükrü Aslan, Sibel Yard imci “193 0’larin Biyolojik Parad igm asi: Dil Etn isite, Iskan ve Ul usun I nsaasi” Dog u
Bati no.44 (2008): 131 -150.

267

Cited in: T ürkyilmaz, Maternal Colo nialism, see note 35, 167.

268

T ürky il maz Maternal Colo nialism, see note 35, 167; Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Educ ation of Desire:
Foucault’s Histo ry of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of T hings, Durha m/L o ndon 2012.

269

Nezahat Gündoga n, & Kazim Gündogan, Der sim’in Kayip Kizlari: Tertele Ceneku (K izla rin Ki yimi )
(Istanbul: Iletisi m Yayinlari, 20 12).

270

“Senelerden beri a dına Dersim denilen mesele tarihin umm anın a katılmış ve ebedi y e n ölmüşt ür.” Yunus
Nadi, Cumh uriyet Gazetesi, N ovember 18, 1937.

reproduced b y the Turkis h state but also b y pro -Kurdish and leftist historiograph y . Th is official
narra tive preserved the perspectives des cribed in the previous section. The success of the
Turkish state over the primiti ve Za za, Kurd, Kız ılbaş and at the same time “es se nti ally Turkish ”
Dersimi was celebrated t hrough the sup pression of a reactionar y up rising. In some accounts
from the Turkish Armed Forces, the 1937 –38 incidents are framed as the s tate’s success over
the final Kurdish uprising.

271

This official narrative was also popularized through popular
novels.

272

For instance, Barbaros Bayka ra pr esents his novel Dersim 1937 as an explanation to
a wider public that the D ersim campaign was “not against the Dersim population but against
the fe udal lords who were cruell y exploi ting Dersim ’s population.”

273

Mustafa Yeşilova
devotes significant portions of his novel Kopo to p roving Dersimi Turkishness using examples
of Alevi practices.

274

This narrative of a state’s success a g ainst a reactionary uprising was appropriated b y
Turkish and international communists.

275

I n the archive of the Comm unist Inter national
(Comintern) the massacres of 1937 – 38 we re described as the progressive war o f the Turkish
state a g ainst reactionary feudal structures : “Des pite the reforms carried out b y the K emalist
party , feudal elements managed to take she lter in this remote part of the country up unti l today .

276

[…] Toda y we are fa cing the hopeless resistance of feudal el ements, whose power is under
the threat of Kemalist g overnment’s energetic reforms.”

277

Meanwhile, the discourse of the Kurdish national movement presented the Dersim
Genocide as one of many Kurdish r ebellions aga inst infringements on Kur dish autonomy . For
example, in his memoir Nuri Dersimi, who esc aped fr om Dersim during the military clashes of
1937 and found refuge in S y ria, refers to 1937 – 38 as a “ Kurdish national uprising. ”

278

This
framing became popular among Kurdish leftist movement during the 19 90s after Dersimi’s
memoir was published in Turkey in 1992.

279

Those defending Zazaism also appropriated the
narra tive, framing it as a Zaza uprising aim ed a t achieving an independent Za zaistan.

280

This

271

Reşat Hallı, T ürk iye C umhuriyetin’inde Ayaklanmalar, (Ankara: Genel Kur may Basımevi, 1 972); Harp
Tar ihi Başlanlığ ı, Genel Kurma y Belgelerindek i Kürt İsyanları, (Ankara: Ka ynak Yayınla rı, 1992).

272

Bilmez, “Sözlü T arih ve Belgesel Film Araciligiyla Bir Ki y imla Y üzlesmek ve Hesaplas mak,” 12.

273

Barb aros Bayk ar a, Der sim 1937 , (İstanbul: Aykar Ya y ı nları, 1 982), 2.

274

Mustafa Yeşilova, Kopo , (İ stanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 19 87).

275

Bilmez, “Sözlü T arih ve Belgesel Film Araciligiyla Bir Ki y imla Y üzlesmek ve Hesaplas mak,” 11.

276

Meric Özeller , (ed), Komu nist Enternasyo nal Belgelerin de Türkiye Dizisi -2, Kürt Milli Me selesi (Ista nbul:
Aydinlik Yayinlari, 1977), 86.

277

Ibid. 428.

278

Nuri Dersi mi, Dersim ve Kürt Milli Mü cadelesine Da ir Hatıratım , (Ankara: Öz - Ge Yayınl arı, 1992), 174 .

279

Bilmez, “Sözlü T arih ve Belgesel Film Araciligiyl a Bir Ki y i mla Yüzlesme k v e He saplasmak,” 1 4.

280

Ebubekir P amukçu , De rsim Z aza Ayakla nmasının Tarihi Kökenleri , (İ stanbul: Yön Yayınları, 1992).

consensus on the framing of the uprising a cross polit ical and ideological gro ups was challenged
during the 1990s in poli tic al magazines published by the Dersimi diaspora in Europe. Inter vie ws
with survivors appeared in ma g azines such as Raşti ye , Desmala Sure and Ware and pres ented
a different picture from t hat of an “ uprising ” and moved awa y from nation alist aspirations.

281

Books comprised of oral histor y interviews

282

with survivors fueled t he se revisionar y
approac hes.
This discussion on whether the incid ents of 1937 – 38 were the result of a n uprising, and
if so a gainst what, r emained an internal d ebate until November 2009, wh en the incidents of
Dersim in 1937 – 38 became an instrument in the contemporar y rivalr y between the
conserva tive, liberal Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development P arty , AKP) and the
founding part y of th e Turkish Republic, the social democrat CHP. Criticiz ing the AKP
government’s D emocratic I nit iative Proc ess ( also called th e Unit y and Fraternit y Project), to
improve the democratic standards of ethnic and religious mi norities, a CHP deput y referred to
the eve nts in Dersim during 1937 – 38 as an ex emplary commitment in Turke y ’s W ar against
Terror and blamed AKP for not being consistent in it s anti-terror policies against the Kurdish
movement.

283

Fueled b y t his discussion a new w ave of publications on what happ ened in
Dersim during 1937 – 38 arose in the 2010s. On e the one h and, the of ficial discourse w as
reproduced without consulting new sources and simpl y repeated state documentation from the
1930s.

284

On the other hand, a new wave of p reviously inaccessible person al archives of state
documentation begun to be published b y several a ctors,

285

a nd litera ture on the military
operations held in Dersim during 1937-38 from a human rig hts perspective appeare d.

286

However, the most effe ctive means of changing publi c vie ws of D ersim was a series of
documentaries. For instance, Nezaha t and Kaz ım Gündoğan’s documentar y İki T utam Saç –
Dersim’in K ayıp Kızl arı (T he Lost Girls of Dersim) , based on the life stories of two girls who

281

Bilmez, “Sözlü T arih ve Belgesel Film Araciligiyla Bir Ki y imla Y üzlesmek ve Hesaplas mak,” 15.

282

İlhami Algör, Ma Sekerdo Kard aş Dersim 38 Tanıklıkla r , ( İstanbul:Doğan Kitap, 2 010); Çem Munzur,
Tanıkların Diliyle Dersim 38, (İstanbul: Per i Yayınları, 1999); Ce m al T aş, R oe Kırmanciye , (İstanbul: Tij
Yayınları, 20 07); Cemal Taş, Dağların Kayıp Anahtarı, (İstan bul: İleti şim, 2010 ), Özgür Erdem, Dersim
Yalanları ve Gerçekler, (İstanb ul: İleri Yayınevi, 20 12).

283

See Chapter IV for a detailed discussio n.

284

Rıza Zeynut, De rsim İsyanla rı ve Seyit Rıza Gerçeğ i, (İ stanbul: Kripto, 2010); Kağan Gökalp, Suat Bulut,
Dersim’in Gi zlenmeye Çalışıl an Gerçek İfa desi, Diyap Ağa , (İstanbul: Kripto Yayınları, 2 011).

285

Necmettin Sahir Sıla n, Doğu Anado l u’da Toplu msal Mühendislik Dersim -Sason (1934-19 47) , İstanbul: T arih
ve Yurt Vakfı Ya yınları, 201 0), İzettin Çalışlar, Dersim Rapo ru , (İ stanbul: İletişim Yayınlar ı, 2010).

286

Hüseyin Aygün , De rsim 1938. Resmiyet ve Hakika t, (Ankar a: Dipnot Ya y ı nları, 2010 ); Ay gün, Ders im 1938
ve Zorunlu Iskân; Cafer De m ir, Osmanlı ve Cumh uriyet Dönemin de Dersim , ( İstanbul: Umut Ya y ınları, 2 009).

lost their parents during the genocidal viol ence, reached a wide audience and raised the question
of adopted children as a part of genocidal violence for the first time.

287

Yet, there is still no c onsensus in the a cademic lit erature on what to call th e incidents of 1937 –
38. W hile some scholars frame it as a massacre,

288

in the light of newl y a vailable sourc es, more
rece nt literature frames it as a ge nocide.

289

Confining wh om ? The establishm en t of the E lazığ Hospital

The establishment of a mental hospital ten years after th e Armeni an Genocide in the cit y that
served as its bi gge st depo rtation hub may b e considered an attempt to he al t he wounds of a new
state. How ever, the dominant approac h to psychiatry in the e arl y y ears of the Turkish Republic
removes this option from the horiz on of possi bilities. I be g in this se ction b y contextualizing the
story of Elazığ Mental Hospital. I will then depict the scientific trends in ps y c hiatr y during the
early republican period.
The opening of mental hospitals in Anatolian provinces became an issue when the first
regulation concerning asylums, the Bimarhaneler Nizamnamesi , was issued in 1876. This was
strongly influenced b y the French R egulation rela ted to mentally ill people issued in 1838 ,

290

and made c lear that no one other than the government had the right to keep the mecnun under
control and ever y one was oblig ed to let the government know about a mecnun in the family or
neighborhood.

291

I n other words, this nizamname was the first attempt to med icalize madness ,
making th e m ec nun , formerl y an object o f knowledge, administration an d care and a shared
subject of famil y and o ther soci o-reli g ious foundations, now one framed by the limits of
medical languag e and governabilit y .

287

“Dersim 38“ directed by Çayan De mirel, “Kara Vagon“ dir ected b y Öz gür Fındık are the two other widel y
watched examples o f documentaries on t he Dersim Genocid e.

288

Kieser Hans- Lukas, Dersim Massacre, 193 7-19 38, Onlin e Ency cloped ia of Mass Violen ce, [online],
published on: 27 J uly, 2011, accessed 09 /04/2019, https://www.sciencespo. fr/mass-violence -war-massacre -
resistance/en/do cument/dersim-ma ssacre- 1937 - 1938 .

289

Bilgin Ayata a nd Serra Hakye m ez , “The AKP’s En gagement with T urk ey’s P ast Crimes: An Analysis of PM
Erdoğan’s ‘Dersi m Apolog y,’” Dialectica l Anthropo logy 37, no. 1 (March 2 013): 131 – 4 3,; Bülent Bilmez,
“Sözlü Tar ih ve Belgesel Film Aracılı ğıyla Bir Kı y ı mla Yüzleş m e k ve Hesaplaş mak,” in K ara Vagon: Dersim-
Kırım ve Sü rgün , by Özgür Fındık, (İsta nbul: Fam, 2012 ), 7 –46; İ sm ail B eşikçi, Tun celi Kanu nu (1935) ve
Dersim Jenosidi , (İstanbul: İsmail B eşikçi Vakfı Ya y ınları, 2013). Zeyn ep T ürkyilmaz, “Maternal Colonialis m
and T urkis h Wo m a n’s Burden in Dersi m: Educating the ‘Mo untain Flo w er s’ of Dersi m,” J ournal o f Women’s
History 28, no. 3 (2016): 162 – 86.

290

Fatih Artvinli, “Top taşı Bim arhane si Sertabibi Dr. Avra m d e Castro: Bir B ibliy ografi,” Osma nlı Bilimi
Araştırmaları , C.XIII, Sa y ı:2 (2012):85 -97 .

291

Fatih Artvinli, Delilik, Siyaset ve Toplum: Toptasi Bimarhanesi (1873 - 1927) (Istanbul: Boğaziçi U niversitesi
Yayınları, 20 13), 31.

The establishment of mental hospitals in Anatolia was suggested b y Ahmet Şakir Paşa
(1838 – 99), an Ottoman dipl omat who is known for his reform initiatives and his active role in
the formation of Hamidiye Alayları (Hamidian regiments)

292

in 1890 – 91, which later bec ame
the main actors in the Armenian massacres in the Kurdish provinces. The Anatolian Reforms
suggested b y Şakir Paşa included pro posals to open mental hospitals in different cities.

293

Although the first steps o f the institutionaliz ation of ps y chiatr y w ere taken d uring Abdülh amit ’s
rule, onl y after the declaration of the first constitutional period (1908 – 18) did solid ini tiative s
start being realized. Th is “dela y ” in the inst itutionalization of psy chiat ry p rovides an interesting
insight into the politiciz ation of madness during the establishment of ps y chi atry. Since
Abdülhamit II ascended to power after his broth er Murad V ha d been di agnosed with mental
illness b y Mon geri and Avram de Castro — the pioneers o f mode rn ps yc hiatr y — he was afraid
of the same ha ppening to him. Due to this fear of being de throned he banned public discussion
or publishing on topics related to ps ychiatry. Th e b elief that madness was an effective m eans
of eliminating politi ca l opposition became widesprea d among political subjects in this
period.

294

During the reign of Abdülhamit II, the Toptaşı Bimarhanesi , the mental hospital in
İstanbul, began to be associated with the Bastille b y his poli tical opponents, the Young Turks.
Like the Ba stille, which only had six poli tical prisoners on the eve of the Fre n ch Revolution,
the Toptaşı Bimarhanesi became an icon of the declaration of the ir first constitution in 1908 ,
although journ alists of the time wrote that ther e w ere no political prisoners house d in it. Yet the
bimarhane was thronge d b y peopl e hoping to see political prisoners.

295

After the declaration of the first constituti on in 1908 by the government of the Young
Turks, who were originall y founded se cre tl y at a medical school,

296

scientific developments in
psyc hiatr y gained momentum. Mazhar Osman [Uzman] , who became the “founding father of
Turkish ps y chiatr y ” after the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923), was s ent b y the
government to German y t o stud y with Emil Kraepelin (1856 – 1926), one of the foremost figures
in German biological ps ychiatry .

297

In this period the Young Turks, from whom the Committee

292

Ha m idian re giments w ere fo unded by giving official status to the se mi -bandit Kurdis h g ro ups during the reign
of Abdülhamid II. Janet Klein. The Margin s of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zo ne . (Stanford:
Stanford Universit y Press, 2011), 21-34 .

293

Ali Karaca, An adolu I slahatı ve Ahmet Ş akir Paşa (1938 - 18 99) , (I stanb ul: Eren Yayınları, 1993).

294

Caglayan Ayh an. 2 005. “In the name o f m odernity, for the sake of natio n: Madness, Ps y c hiatr y and Po litics
from the Otto m a n Empire to the Turkish Rep ublic 1500 - 19 50)” unpublished PhD thesis submitted to York
University Social Anthropolog y Department, 2005. 15 2.

295

Fatih Artvinli, “Top taşı Bim arhane si Sertabibi Dr. Avra m d e Castro: Bir B ibliy ografi,” Osma nlı Bilimi
Araştırmaları , C.XIII, Sa y ı:2 (2012):85 -97 , 91.

296

Kemal Karpat, “T he Transformation o f the Otto m a n State, 1 789 - 1908,” International Journal o f Middle East
Studies, no. 3 (3), (1972), 243 -281.

297

Ayhan, “In the name o f modernity, for the sake o f nation,” 20 2.

of Union and Progress (CUP) emerged, used the Toptasi Bimarha nesi as a propaganda tool to
legitimize their policies b y invoking an aff inity with scienc e and pro gress. I n 1910, the
Bimarhaneler K omisyonu (Commission of Asy lu m s) recommended the establishment of two
mental hospi tals: one in the west, in Manisa, and one in th e east, in Aleppo , in what is toda y
Syria.

298

Two other provi nces with r ailroad connections, Elazığ and Dı y arbakır , were
mentioned as alternatives to Aleppo. Since the idea of renova ting an existing hospital was less
of a finan cial burden tha n constructing a ne w one, the committee chose to open the hospital in
Aleppo.

299

It was onl y in 1925 that a mental hospital was opened in Anatolia,

300

when Mazhar
Osman Uzman’s close friend Refik Sa y dam beca me the first minister of h ealth of the Turkish
Republic. I n the meantime, however, two important political developments occurred, affecting
the choice of cit y wher e this hospital would be open ed. Firstly, following the Arm enian
Genocide, hospi tals previousl y b elonging to Protestant mi ssionary groups were seiz ed b y th e
Ottoman Empire and became available fo r government use. Secondl y , in 19 18, towards the end
of World War I , the Ottoman Empire lost Aleppo. That is how the General Hospital of Elazığ
was transformed into the first mental hospital in Eastern Anatolia in 1925

301

with a capacity of
50 beds.

302

The founder of the Elazığ Mental Hospital was Ahmed Şükrü Emed (1877– 1940), a
man whose biograph y clearl y reflects the fluid bo undarie s b etween politics and science at the
time. Emed was born in Istanbul and graduated from the Mekteb- i Tıbbi y e ( School of Medicine)
in 1929. He worked in the Ha y darpaşa Militar y Hospital, Ş işli French Mental Hospital and
Darülaceze during Worl d War I and finished his int ernship at Toptaşı Bimarhanesi. As the
Ottoman Empire stren g thened it s alliance with German y towards the end of the 19 th centur y ,
military medical students were increasingl y trained in Germany and spread what they le arned
through lectures at the medical faculty in I stanbul. I n this manner, German theories on
psyc hiatr y spread in Turkish circles.

303

Emed wa s one of those contributing to the spread of the
German school in Tu rkish ps y chi atry. He studied for more than a y ear at K raepelin’s ps y chiatr y

298

Artvinli, Delilik, S iyaset ve To plum, 207-217.

299

Artvinli, Delilik, S iyaset ve To plum, 216.

300

For the decision to o pen a mental hospital in Elazı ğ see the parlia m entar y minutes page 2 86.
https://www.tb mm .gov.tr/t utanaklar/TUT ANAK/TBMM/d 02/c015/tbm m020150 73.pdf

301

I am thankful to Fati h Artvinli who helped m e to reco nstruct the stor y o f Elazığ Mental Hosp ital. I am able to
put those develo pments together thanks to our personal corr espondence.

302

See the yearbook o f Elazığ belonging to 1 925 page 291 :
http://ktp.isam.or g.tr/pdfsal/D02 467192500000000. pdf

303

Ayhan. “In the name o f modernity, for the sake o f nation”.

clinic in Munich with Fel ix Plaut (1877 – 1940). Aft er r eturning to Turke y he founded a serolog y
laboratory at Toptasi Bimerhanesi to dia gnose Genera l Paralysis of the I n sane, today known as
neurosyphillis. After taki ng an active part in the establis hment of the Elazığ M ental Hospital
and working there for se vera l y e ars, he was elected parliamenta r y d eput y for Di y arbakır.

304

When we look at the the ories in the field of psy c hiatry in Turke y durin g the 1920s and
1930s, unsurprisingly we encounter a normalization of nationalist ideas throug h ps yc hological
theories. Althou gh th ere is broad cons ensus on the significance of euge nic ideas in e arly
republican ps ychiatry, there is a v ariety o f ar guments on its effects in practice. Looking at
parliamentary deb ates on the enactment of eugenic s laws and following the discussions within
the medic al c ommunit y , Orhan Aybers su gg ests that the reg ulations on purification of race and
society were onl y effective for a short pe riod around 1930 and were thereafter a bandoned.

305

I n
her stud y of laws and di scussions among scientific communities and politi cians concerning
public hygiene and public health in the early republi can pe riod, A yça Alemdaroğ lu argues that
eugenics fitted well into the “collectivist discourse” of the time and p rovided the ruling elite
with “a justification for state’s broader and d eeper involvement in matters previously left to
individuals,” such as health and h y giene.

306

Following the discourses on eugenics in educationa l
conferences or ga nized by the go vernme nt during 1938 – 41 and focusing on the writing s of the
eugenicist prime minister, Sadi I rmak, Murat Ergin shifts our attention to the dismissed role of
eugenics, biometrics and anthropometric claims in discussions of race and Turkishness. He
argues th at , in fact, the se operated as a regulator o f the “negotiations betw een Turkish identit y
and modernity ” in the making of Turkishness.

307

From the writings of the “ foundin g father ” of Tu rkish ps y c hiatry, M azhar Os man, w e
see that, ali g ned with the biol og ical s chool’s approach, the field was defined as the “ps y cholog y
of the brain” wh ere a so ul is “the name given to all functions of the brain , ” not “a creature
separa te from the body or a thing.”

308

I n thi s biological-psycholog ical approa ch,
psyc hopatholog y was co nsidered to be the “abnormalities that interfere wit h the functions of
the brain, ” and “the disea se of madness is a disorder of intelligence, memor y or will” depending

304

F. Erdem, Türk Hekim leri Biyo grafisi (İstanbul: Çit uri Biladerler Basım Evi, 1 945).

305

Orhan Aybers, “E ugenics in T urkey during the 1 930s” unpublis hed PhD dissertatio n, Department of Histor y
(Ankara: Middle E astern Technical U niversity, 2003) .

306

Ayça Alemdaroğlu, " Politics of the Bo dy and Eugenic Disc ourse in Early Republica n Turkey." Bo dy &
Society 11, no. 3 (2005): 61 -76, 73.

307

Murat Ergin. "B iom etrics and Anthrop om etrics: T he Twins of T urkish Modernity." Pattern s of Prejudice 42,
no. 3 (2 008): 281 -304, 304.

308

Mazhar Uz m an, A kil Hastalikla ri , (Istanbul: Kader Matbaasi, 19 35).

on the kind of dy sfunct ion of the brain.

309

M ad ness was described as a “threat to social
progress; ” “ a feeble mi nd and a w eak will were t he most important threats to civilization.”

310

The “threat” could take the forms of criminalit y , im morality , povert y and uncontrolled
sexualit y .

311

In this frame, healing madness o r the mad was not a p rimar y concern; instead,
“disciplining and im proving the mad/madness was co -constitutive of the normative ideal of the
moral/modem/superior Turkish citizen/race/society .”

312

The problem was mainl y how to keep
“[…] the bad, unhealth y and illegitimate childre n of the nation” away from “mentall y and
racially pur e and h ea lth y” bodies.

313

The legitimization of social r eform w ent hand in hand with
the legitimization of psy chi atric knowledge. T he idea o f the ideal T urkish citizen was
constru cted through a co mplex “interplay between the cultural, biological norm, normal and
abnormal fleshe d out via the mad person’s deviant bod y .”

314

In this negotiation between construc ting Turkishness within modern scientific tools, the
theorization of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) played a crucial role in the formation of
modern Turkishness through th e use of modern scientific tools . I n his ana l yse s of th e condition
of Ottom an soldiers during W orld W ar I, Mazhar Osman writes that there was a “dramatic
prevalence of ‘hy sterical symptoms’ among Eur opean troops.” In contrast, he asserts that th ese
symptoms showed up only in incomparabl y small numbers a mong Tur ks: “The arm y of
neurotics… does not exist in Turke y [as it does in Ger man y ]. ” H e explains thi s putative
“absence” of w ar neuro ses, especiall y P TSD, as follows : “This disorder is a problem of
imperialist Western mercenary armies who invade the countries of others. The Turkish nation
is a wa rrior nation. W h en the Turkish sold ier defends his own country, he does it with
pleasure.”

315

In diff erentiating the Turkish nation from their European counterparts Osman no t
only attempt ed to nationaliz e ps y chiatr y, he plante d the seed of a lon g-term denial of war trauma
in Turkey.
Looking at the lack of attention to war-related trauma in Turkish military and civil
hospitals this denial should be interpreted as a historical specificity “in relation to the

309

Mazhar Uz m an, A kil Hastaliklari , 10.

310

Mazhar Uz m a n, “Idis ve Kisi r Etme,” in Konferanslari m: Medikal, P aramedikal. Mekteplerde, kuluplerde,
radyod a soylenmis” , ed Uzman, M. O. (Istanbul: Kader Mat baasi, 19 42), 183 -204.

311

Osman, “Idis ve Ki sir Etme,” in Konferanslarim: Med ikal, P aramedikal. Mektep lerde, kuluplerde, rad yoda
soylenmis,” 191.

312

Ayhan, “In the name o f modernity, for the sake o f nation,” 21 6.

313

Uz m an Maz har, Sin ir Hastaliklari . (Istanbul: Kader Matb aasi, 19 34).

314

Ayhan, “In the name o f modernity, for the sake o f nation,” 21 6.

315

Yücel Yanikda g, “Healing the Natio n: Prisoners of War,” Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 191 4 -1939
(Edinburgh: Edinbur gh Universit y P ress, 2013 ), 178.

particularities of specific military conflicts, welfare and m edical institution al histories, and
moral and political e conomies.”

316

The denial of the fac t that soldi ers were affected b y war and
violence helped construct the “myth of the warrior nation”

317

in Turkey , and ascribed it with
innate martial ch aracter isti cs.

318

Since soldiers were not traumatiz ed during the war, there was
no need for sp ecial unit s to deal with trauma after World W ar I. Th is m y th of the military nation
legitimized b y earl y republican psychiatry sur vived until the late 1990s.

319

The massiv e
numbers of cases of do mestic viol ence o r cinne t

320

by young men in the aftermath of their
obligatory militar y servi ce were considered priv ate matters and the “non -political face s of
violence”

321

until the end of 1990s.

322

In the absence of the recognition of war trauma, an d with the dominance of t he biological
school of ps y chiatr y , wh ich was concerned with confining the biologically unh ealthy to keep
them awa y from th e biologicall y pure, the establishment of the Elazı ğ M ental Hospital in a
former Protestant hospit al building ma y be inter preted as a form of state violence. Indeed, I
argue that it strengthen ed the medicalized language of racialization that was mobilized during
the Dersim Genocide. T his use of medic alized language as a strateg y o f legitim izing state
violence had already been mobilized during the Armenian Genocid e. A doctor who served in
the Ottoman arm y provides one of the sharpest ex amples of the use of medical language to
legitimize violence in the earlier period :
Either t he Arm enia ns were to eli m i nate t he T urks, or the T urks w ere to eli minate t he Armenians. I did
not hesitate when I w as con fronted with this dilemma. My Turkishness prevailed over my profession. I
figured, instead of wiping us out, w e will wipe them o ut....On the questio n how I, as a doctor, could
have mu rdered , I can answ er a s follows: the A r menians had becom e hazardous microbes in the body of
this country. W ell, isn’t it a doctor’s duty to kill microbes?

323

316

Salih Can Açık söz, “Ghosts Within: A Genealogy of War Trauma in Turke y ,” Jo urnal of th e Ottoman a nd
Turkish Stud ies Association no.2:2 , (2015), 259 -280.

317

Ayşe Gül Altına y. The Myth of th e Military Nation : Militarism, Gen der, and Education in Turkey. Ne w Yo rk:
Palgrave Mac m illan, 200 4.

318

Ayhan, “In the name o f modernity, for the sake o f nation,” 26 3.

319

Aciksöz, “Gho sts Within”.

320

Cinnet is “a culture - bound psychiatric categor y that denotes a temporary and viole nt episode of “insanity”
during which a n alm ost exclusively male per petrator goes o n a family killing spree before committing suicide”
(Aciksoz 201 5:265).

321

Nurdan Gürbile k, The New C ultural Climate in Tu rkey: Living in a Shop Window ( London: Zed, 201 1).

322

Aciksöz, “Gho sts Within,” 276.

323

Salâhattin Güngör, "Bir Canlı T arih Konuşuyor" [Living Hi story Speaks], Resimli T arih Mecmuası, part 3 ,
vol.4, no. 4 3, July 1953, pp. 2444 - 45 cited in Uğur Üngör “The Ar m a nian Genocide, 1 915” in The Ho locaust
and Other Genocides: An Introduction , Boender, B arbara & Wiechert ten Ha ve (ed). (Amsterda m: Amsterdam
University Pr ess, 2012).

Considering Armenians as “ microbes ” helped co nsolidate the nation as a corporeal unit y
working cooperativel y against the enem y, enabled the Tu rks to prove their s cientific
superiority over them, and leg it imized the right to kill.
La ter, in the Dersim Genocide, we see the framing of Dersim as an abscess that
required surger y . The M ülkiye Müfettişi (Chief of C ivil I nspectors) Hamdi Bey writes in a
report dated 1927: “Dersim is an absce ss for the Republic. I t must be operated on precisel y
and a possibilit y of a bit ter end should be prevented.”

324

This diag nos is circulated ove r time.
For instance, Musta fa Kemal re ferred to Dersim a s an abscess on the republic in his opening
speech to the Turkish parliament in 1935,

325

the year the Tun celi Law was passed. The
metaphor was not limited to parlia mentarians. In 1 937, the newsp aper Akşam celebrated th e
Turkish army ’ s attack on Dersim , stating: “Ac tuall y , this weird abscess should not live i n
this natural li fe of Turkish nation an y more.”

326

I n the same y ear, Başsavcı (attorne y general)
Hatemi Şahamoğlu ident ified Dersim as the abscess of the republic during the prosecution
of Seyy id Rıza who was executed for bein g the le ader o f the uprising.

327

The court report of
the prosecution is rich in it s use of medical metaphors. Referring to those prosec uted with
Seyy i d Rız a , Şahamoğlu states: “Not onl y for th emselves but also for their entourage, they
are the most dangerous in e xistence in the world. As one of those miserable confessed in the
interrogation, those who are exposed to their cunning lose si ght and are put in the lunatic
asy lum.”

328

Th us, the characteristics of Dersimis shifted betwe en being sick themselves an d
making other s sick.
The metaphor of the a bscess was followed b y that of the wound. At the beg inning of
the mi litary campaign to Dersim Cumhuriyet , the official newspaper of the CHP, declare d
that: “This wound opened up again. I t stinks.”

329

Following the mi litary campaign, the
newspaper T an complain ed about an unhealed wound: “The wound of Dersim , which has
renewed itself within its scab, became chronic due to the reform methods of the sultanate
times. This wound, like all other abscesses, be came mad in the republican times.”

330

Such

324

T he original report of Hamdi Bey dated 1 926 is kept in the milit ar y archives and is curre ntly unavailable. T he
version that I a m referring her e is only a part of his repo rt p ublish ed in Hü seyin Yaman, Türkiye’nin Kürt Sorunu
Hafızası , (Ankara: SETA, 2011 ), 91.

325

Göner, “A Social Hi story of Po w er and Struggle in T urkey”, 8 4.

326

Akşam , J un e 22, 1937, 3 cited in Taha B aran, 1937- 193 8 Yılları Arasında Basınd a Dersim , (Istanbul: İletişi m
Yayınları, 20 14), 107.

327

Bulut, Dersim Ra porları , 28 5.

328

Bulut, Dersim Ra porları , 29 1- 292.

329

Cumhuriyet, June 29, 19 38. Cited in Baran, 1937 - 1938 Yılları Arasında Basında Dersim , 10 4.

330

Tan, J une 17, 1938. Cited in Baran, 19 37- 1938 Yılları A rasında Basında Dersim , 107 .

metaphors expressed a ne ed to heal a long-standing and intractable m edical p roblem through
methods that had not previously bee n exercised.
Amid the multiplicit y of descriptions (Dersimis as, essentiall y , Turks, Kurds, Zaza,
wild Turks etc.) and diverse suggestions of wa y s to “ solve the problem of De rsim ” discussed
in the pr evious section, genocidal violence happen ed to b e the chos en method, which
targeted the inhabitants of Dersimis as a united entity , as parts of an abscess or wound. I do
not sugge st there was a direct c ausal r elationship between the establishment of the Elazı ğ
Mental Hospital and the Dersim Genoc ide. How ever, it represented an attempt to imag ine
the racializ ation and pathologization of Dersim from the city that served as the military base
for its two incidents of genocidal viole nce.
Conclusion

This chapter historiciz es the reference point for narratives of Şe y wu şen ’s madness b y
describing how Dersim was put in to the “ savage slot , ” a place reserved for th e constituti ve other
in the late Ottom an and ea rl y R epublican periods . This era is not only significant in terms of
contextualizing the stor y of Şe y wuşen but be cause it is the time in which the terminolog y of
defining Turkishness and its others were developed. R epea tedl y d escribing Dersim as a place
where ethnic and religious deviancy , l ack o f authorit y and timelessness was located made
relig ious devianc y , unwanted ethnic difference an d savager y the “ stick y ” signs

331

of Dersim .
Putting Dersim in the “ sava g e slot ,”

332

where “bac kward p eople without hi story” live in an
“unruly l andscape,”

333

provi ded le gitimate grounds for the Turkish state to prove its superiorit y .
In this sense, knowled g e production became a site of viol enc e. Like other coloni al forces, the
Turkish state created its constitutive other through epistemic violence to assert itself as the la w-
making power. The disco urse of opening Dersim into civilization through a surgical operation
removing the abscess also involves a gender disp osition.

334

Using epistemic viol enc e to cr eate
Dersim as devoid of culture and histor y , the modern patriarchal state constitut ed it as “virgin”
territory which was “pa ssivel y awaiting the th rusting male insemination o f histor y , language

331

Ahmed, Th e Cultural Politics of Emotion .

332

Michel- Rolph T rouillot, “Anthrop ology and the Savage Slot : The Poetics and P olitics of Otherness,” i n
Global Tr ansf o rmations (Ne w York: Palgrave Mac millan, 2003 ), 7 – 28.

333

Trouillot, 7 - 28.

334

Anne McClintock, Imperial Lea ther: Race , Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonia l Contest (Ne w Yo rk 1995),
30.

and re ason. ”

335

This dichoto my of natur e r epresented b y the wild, sav age land a nd its inhabitants
and culture was epitomized by th e state’s legitimiz ation of a brutal p rocess as “opening to
civilization.”
However, as I have discussed in this chapter, thi s proce ss of cr eating the sa vage of the
Turkish state did not develop through clear-cut definitions but with blurred demarcations.
Dersimis being possibl y Turkish but at the s ame t ime Zaza and Kurdish is significant in two
ways. Firstly, it shows that taking the decision of annihilating a group of peop le does not depend
on defining them as inh erently different. I n oth er wo rds, the possibil ity of D ersimis bein g
essentially Turkish but “deformed” due to their proximity to Kurds and Zazas did not pos e an
obstacle to the ex erc ise of genocidal violence. Secondl y , the blu rr ed boundar y between the
constitutive other and those belonging to the nation is significant in terms of state formation.
The modern state is defined through its monopol y on pow er, which is characterized by th e
monopoly on violence. The monopol y on viol ence is legit imized b y it s us e on the other. In other
words, the modern nation-state is founded against the idea of the other from which the nation
needs to be prot ected. In that sense, the possi bility of Dersimis being “ essentially Turks but …”
destabilizes this divide between th e insider and o utsider, between the viol able and the core
constituent, which puts the demarcation of Tur kishness into question.
Epistemic violence continued to play a key role in the distortion of knowledge of the
ge nocidal violenc e which re sulted in a regime of d enial sustained for more than 70 y ea rs. Since
“ bring ing law ” int o a “ lawless landscape ” through methods that are out-of-law would make the
Turkish state’s le gitimacy qu estionable, the genocidal violence n eeded t o be silenced. However,
the policy o f de nial did not provide cohere n ce either. While the me dia and the off icial
historiogra ph y were sile nt on the at rocities committ ed by the Turkish ar my, the y stressed the
need to approach the pro blem/abscess/wound of Ders im “ differentl y ” from means used by th e
Ottoman government. I argue th at the framin g of difference and the n eed for a different
treatment paved the wa y for a lawless p rocess of bringing law. I n oth er words, the epistemic
violence normaliz ed the ex ceptiona l use of violen ce and the silence that was woven around the
atrocities committed b y t he Turkish army. In this regard, the medicalization of racial discourses
operated as a str engthener in legitimizing the exceptional treatment b y brin g ing an authoritative
scientific tone to discussions on the solut ion to the problem of Dersim. While this chapter h as
focused on the creation of otherness throu gh epistemic and physical violence, the followin g

335

McClintock, 30 .

chapters will elaborate o n how thi s differenc e is performed. Chapter II will depict the process
of the aff liction of this hi storically sit uated otherness through the stor y of Şeywuşen.

CHAPTER II. AFFLICTION OF OTHERNESS: B ECOMING MAD
IN DERSIM OF T HE 1960S – 70S

Well, you ca n as k me why I am that crazy about our madmen (laughing). I restore myself with them. [...]
Not when Ib o comes a nd asks f or money, for sure (laughing). His brother makes hi m ask [ for money]
though. [...] T hink i ng ab out Şe ywuşen, he had nothing to do w it h m o ney. Someone who would not look
for more than what he had makes m e feel good , in gen eral. Yes, fine he had more than five cigarettes at
hand (laug hing) nothi ng else thou gh. [...] T he naiveté I guess, innocence, or however you would like to
call. Not car ing about t his-wor ldly things. Who else has this ? I don’t know.

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These are the words of K eşo, describing his love for the madmen of Dersim. Keşo, who work ed
at a petrol station in the center of Dersim, spok e about Şeywuşen as on e of the childhood
character s he grew up with. L ik e other interlocutors, he differentiated betw een Ş ey w uşen and
other madmen of Dersim based on the former’s genuine r efusal of this -worldly thi ng s. F or
instance, Let- I t-Snow Ibo, one o f the best-known madman of Dersim, who was known for
asking for snow during good weather in spring and summer, and for asking for mone y from
almost ever y one he talk ed to. B y contrast, Şe y w uşen was remembered for his shabb y
appearance, his life on th e streets and his refusal o f mone y, differentiating him from other well-
known madmen in the reg ion.
This cha pter describes how Şe y wuşen came into Keşo’s life when the latte r wa s a child
in the late 1960s. I t gives a general picture of the socio-political atmosphere at the time
Şeywuşen be came a part of ever y d ay life in Dersim. Rec onstructing Şe ywuşen’s bio graph y
through o ral histor y inter views, it examines the components of Şe y wuşen’s madness and shows
how this madness was narr ated as related to various incidents of state violence, his mili tary
service and the betrayal of his wife. Throu g h a gendere d anal ysis of the narrated reasons for
Şeywuşen’s madne ss it illustrates how his identit y as a popular madman was construc ted upon
his failed masculinit y . Unpacking the rel ation between state -sponsored vio lence and m adness,
it conceptualizes his madness as an affliction of the otherness attributed to the region (s ee
Chapter I). The chapter concludes b y fur ther elaborating the relationship between state violenc e
and Şeywuşen’s madn ess through the stories that are widel y told about him. I t shows that the
shared se nse o f the cont inuity of st ate viol ence in the r egion and the ma dness of Şe y wuşen

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“ Yani şimdi sen ba na sorabilirsin tab ii neden delilere bu kadar deli gib i taktığımı (gülüyor). Sosyalizm g elmiş
olsa ba şka olurdu. Ama şimdilerde... kend imi sağaltıyorum onlarla işte. [ ... ] Ibo gelip de para istediğ inde değil
tabii (gülü yor). Ona da abisi sord urtuyor da. [. .. ] Şeywuşen’i düşünsen e, parayla pulla işi olma z.Böyle
elindekin den başka bişi istemeyen biri, yani ban a iyi gel iyor, genel ola rak yani. Tamam şimdi beş siga rası
olurdu elinde (gülüyor) ama başka b ir şeyi de yok. Saflık herhalde, masumiyet ya da işte n e dersen d e adına. Bu
dünya lı işlerle ilgisiz. Başka kimde var? Ben b ilmiyorum .” Excerpt from the intervie w I conduc ted with Keşo i n
Dersim, July 20 18.

operated as tools to transcend temporal bound aries betwe en incidents of st ate violence and thus
to articulate links between the injuries the y caused . The chapter ends b y expanding on this
transgression, opening ground for a kind of c onnection between Dersimis based on the
particular injury they prioritiz e in their soc ially performe d identit y .
The era of radical politica l imaginati o ns a nd brutal s tate violenc e

The 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s: each of these three decades began with a mili tary int ervention
in Turkey, and with state viol ence that was accompanied b y resistance against it. L eaving the
transformation that th e 1980 coup d’ état brought to Chapter III, in this ch apter, I will briefly
depict the general atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s in which Şe y wuşen became a well-known
madman. Almost all the leftist/revolutionar y groups exist ing in toda y ’s Turkey o rig inated
between 1974 and 1980.

337

In mainstr ea m hist ory wr iting, the period between the two military
coups of 1960 and 1980 i s generall y referred to as the “pre - coup [ 1980]” peri od and is described
as a time o f viole nt clashes between leftist a nd rightist arme d groups

338

a nd of violent conflicts
between Sunnis and Alevis which resulted in Al evi massacres in Maraş (in 1978) and Çorum
(in 1980). I n m ainstream historical narratives, the clashes that happened during th e pre-coup
period are instrumentalized to justif y the state sponsored violence which came to the fore with
the coup d’état of 1980. However, in the eyes of the revolutionaries of this period, th e decade
before the coup is associated with an atmospher e of emancipation, transformation, rebellion,
hope and fr ictions.

339

What makes the 1965 – 9 80 period special in th e hist ory of Turke y is the dominance of
widesprea d stru ggles f or political and ec onomic ri g hts, massive mobili zation a nd the tendenc y
to get o rganized in leftist and socialist groups in ever y walk of life.

340

L eftist mobilizatio n
spread nationwide follow ing the military coup of May 27, 1960 which tar geted the government
of the De mocr atic Part y (1946 – 92) which ha d won the first democratic elections of the Tur kish
Republic in 1946, ending the 27-y ear single-part y regime of the CHP, the R epublic’s founding
party . The 1960 militar y intervention was precipi tated by an increase in authoritarian actions
by the Democratic Party government, such as press censorship, arrests of journalists, and
limitations im posed on membe rs of other poli tical parties. To legitimize the political

337

Vehbi Ersan, 1 970’lerde Türkiye Solu (Istanbul: Iletişim Ya yın cılı k, 2013) , 3.

338

Kere m Ün üvar, “70'ler: '80'le rin öncesi '60 'ların sonrası,” To plum ve Bilim 127 (2013): 30 - 47. Işık Ergüden,
“1970'li Yıllar T ürkiye'sinden Bir Silahlı Prop aganda Deneyimi: MLSPB ”, Birikim: 274 , (2012) ,81- 91.

339

Işık Ergüden, “197 0'li Yıllar T ürkiy e'sinden Bir Silahlı Prop aganda Deneyimi”

340

Ersan, 19 70’lerde Türkiye Solu , 4 .

involvement of the mi litary br anch which organiz ed the coup, several law professors w ere
brought to g ether to issue a new constitution

341

which “tolerated a wid er spec trum of political
activity than before, both to the left and to the right. ”

342

The coup of 1960 is a pec uliar militar y
intervention in the sense that its effec ts ex tended be y ond the relationship between the mili tary
and politics in the following period. I t trans formed the hegemonic underst anding of politics in
Turkey b y unintentionally w elcoming new a ctors into the poli tical sc ene. After the coup of
1960, groups w hich had traditionally been excluded started to be a pa rt of o rganized politics

343

through l abor unions , coopera tives and associati ons. This laste d until the coup d’état o f
September 12, 1980 (see Chapter III ).

344

The Türki y e Işçi Partisi ( TIP, Workers’ P arty of Turke y ) was founded to vo ice workers’
concerns in parliament b y a group of unioni sts in 1961. I n th e general ele ction of 1965 TIP
entered p arlia ment with 1 5 deputies. W ith 3% of votes, TI P achieved an un prec edented success
in the histor y of leftist parties, whic h wa s not exceeded until the 2000s. Until 1969 TI P was the
only organization where s ocialists gathered, but in 1968 – 69 fractional divisions within the party
on radical a ction by stu dents started to become visi ble. The occupation of universities and
clashes between le ftist and rightist students bec ame dail y e vents towards the end of the
1960 s.

345

The 1970s witnessed the mobilization of larg e g roups of people and the creation of labor
and political orga nizations. Türkiy e Halk Kurtul uş Partisi -Cephesi (THKP-C, People’s
Liberation P arty-Front o f Turkey), Türki ye Kurtuluş Ordusu (THKO, P eople’s Liberation
Army of Turkey), and Türkiy e Komunist Partisi Marxist -L eninist (TKP/M L, Communist P arty
of Turkey /Marx ist-Le ninist ) and the latte r’s armed wing, Türki y e İşçi Kö ylü Kurtuluş Ordusu
( TİKKO , Liberation Army o f the Workers and Pea sants of Turke y ) were the three biggest leftist
organizations at the time. S tarting from the mid-19 60s, Dersim became one of the cities where
the mobilization of leftist groups became dominant both in urban and rural a rea s. It hosted both
legal and illeg al leftist and revolutionary g roups. Dersim’s mountains we re among the primary
bases for T İ K KO, the armed branch o f TKP/M L. I n m y interview with Zülfikar, who spent

341

Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Mo dern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2 004), 242 . Feroz Ahmad. Turkey: Th e
quest for id entity . (Oxford: On ew orld P ublications, 2014 ), 129.

342

Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 246 .

343

Ergun Aydınoğlu. Türkiye solu , 1960 - 1980:" bir amn eziğin anıları," (Istanbul: Versus Kit ap, 2007), 46.

344

Ersan, 19 70’lerde Türkiye Solu .

345

Ersan, 19 70’lerde Türkiye Solu .

y e ars in prison due to their affiliation with a Maoist revolutionary mov ement following the
1980 coup, they described the political atmosphere of the 1970s in Dersim as follows :
Dersim was p um ping blo od into the revolutionary moveme nts. Look at the fo un ders o f t he b ig leftist
organizations, you will find many Dersi mis. Dersi m was known for its b ravery, as a center of
rebellion. All those s uperstitions, madnes s, whatsoever w ere attached to Dersi m r ecently.

346

Although not comparable with the organizational structure of the 1970s, the Maoist tradition
still continues its activitie s, both democratic and “revol utionary, ” in Dersim today. The face of
the lea der o f the TKP/ML, Ibrahim Kaypakkaya (1949 – 73) re mains one o f the most fr equentl y
encountered image s in th e c it y s cape of Dersim.

Figure 4: Photo of the late TKP/ML leader Ibrahim Kaypakkaya p l aced on the s tatue of Sey yid Rıza in Dersim.
The TKP/M L as an organiz ation and Ka y pakka y a as a poli tical leader were among the dominant
political features of Dersi m in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of m y interlocutors who were above
50 years of age referred to Maoist organizations and to Ka y p akkaya in the ir interviews , either
through narra tives of thei r own enc ounters and inv olvements, or their re latives’ .
In the absen ce of the archives of local poli tical groups, a report written b y Kay pakka y a
describing the atmosphere in Kürecik p rovides insights on the atmosphere of a particular
“revolutionary spirit” that was dominant in Dersim. Kürecik is located in Malaty a, an Eastern
Anatolian province, and a city inhabited b y th e Kurdish-Alevi popula tion. I n terms of
demographic and cultural characteristics it is simil a r to Dersim. Dersim is the center of religious

346

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Zül fikar and Mustafa in Dersim, April 2014.

teachings for th e Kurdish-Alevis of Malat y a, in common with the rest of the Kurdish -Alevi
community in Turke y .

347

In that sense, there is a relationship between the two cities which
extends bey ond demographic and cultural simi larities. W ritten by an ideologue of a
revolutionary or g anization for the organization ’s own purposes, Kaypakkaya ’s report on
Kürecik is illust rative in terms of visuali zing the time from the perspective of revolutionaries.
Given how influential TKP/ML was among the Kur dish-Alevi communiti es of both Dersim and
Kürecik, the ethnographic report also helps to il lustrate the nature of the “blood ” Dersim was
pumping into the revolutionary movement, as m y i nterlocutor Zülfikar put it.
Out o f 21 villages in which we held activities, 20 of them are K urdish. All t he Alevi te villages are
Kurdish. But it is i m po ssible to co m e ac ross an y trace of Kurdish nationalism. T o the co ntrary, the
forced T urkification po licy of the hegemonic cla ss had been quite succes sful a nd even a m o ng the Kurds
it is possible to d etect T urkish nationalism. Since most o f the people are poor Kurdish and Alevite, fo r
hundreds of years, t hey have been p ut un der the d ominion of a triple hegemony (o f economy,
nationalism, an d relig ion). The tyrant state po w er, that is th e main p erpetrator of the hege monic classes ,
succeeded to a certain e xtent to cr eate fear among t he peop le. T his fear , which e specially articulates
itself a mong t he elder ly, manif ests itself when it comes to ar med strug gle, and th ey extremely s hy awa y
from i t. S uch shying away is p artl y due to the suppression of the Kasimoglu and Der sim rio ts

348

and th e
violent torture ap plied to the people.
[…]
The idea of armed struggle unites almost all t he poo r villagers and especially the po or villager y outh.
Among t hem, there are those who are r eady to sacrifice all the y have and jo in the armed s truggle ri ght
away. Elementary school students, and even those who can hardly s pea k Turkish betwee n th e ages of 4
and 5 old their left f ists saying, w it h their broken T urkish, “ I’ m a revolutionar y and a socialist.”

Young w o men, the brid es and girls sympathize strongly with the revolu tionary st ruggle. The y long for
the armed struggle. They lament for those revol utionary youth who passed, and shed tea rs for them .
They em b race those friends who are activ e in the region with lo ve and respect. Some of the y o ung g irls
even rej ect the idea o f marriage so that it wouldn’t stop the m from j oining t he pr ospective ar med
struggle that the y wis h to join. In this time, when the revolu tionar y struggle is o nly getting active very
recently, it is possible to see hun dreds of exa mples o f ho w th e revolutionar y ideas ca n be located d eeply
among the poor people.
[…]
The situation of the dedes , th e feet o f whom t he p eople kissed even 20 years ago, is ve ry sad . I t is
impossible to find a dede w ho says, “I’m n ot revolutio nary.” Because th e people kno w that these d edes
pretend to be revolutionar y due to the pressures o f their enviro nm ent, t hey ar e co nsidered impo sters a nd
their w ords are not regarded highly. At t his p oint, we have to p oint this o ut as a neg ative issue: T he
anger o f the p eople is somewhat app eased b ecause of t he migratio n o f some of the villagers to Germany ,
and the hope of so me to do so.

349

As Kay pakka y a writes, the revolutionar y mobilizations of the 1960s and 19 70s mainl y aimed
to abolish the economic, national and religious mechanisms of oppression embedded in the

347

Dilşa Deniz, R E/Yol Dersim İna nç Sembolizmi: An tropolojik Bir Yaklaşım ( Istanbul: İletişi m Yayı nları,
2012). Ahmet Keri m Gültekin, Tunceli’d e Sünni Olma k: Tu nceli Pertek’te Ulusal ve Yerel Kimlik Öğelerinin
Etnolojik Tetkiki , (Istanbul: B erfin Yayınları, 201 0), 45 -47. Erdal Gez ik, Dinsel ve Etn ik ve Politik So runlar
Baglamin da Alevi Kürtler , (Ankara: Kala n Yayinlari, 2 010).

348

What he refers here as the “Dersim riots” are the 1 937 – 3 8 m ilitary clas hes. The Dersi m Genocide has been
mainly narrated as a riot/rebellion b y leftist groups until the oral history proj ects initiated in 2 000 s. Bülent
Bilmez, “Sözlü T arih ve Belgesel Film Aracılığıyla Bir Kı y ımla Y üzleşmek ve Hesaplaş mak”, in Kara Vagon:
Dersim- kırım ve S ürgün Özgür Fındık (ed). (İ stanbul: Fam Yayınları, 20 12, 7 – 47, 10- 13.

349

İbrahi m Ka ypakkaya, Kayp akkaya kitabı : seçme ya zılar ve üzerine yazılar (Ankara : Dipn ot Yayınları,
2015).

capitalistic nation -state. Material conditions in Dersim durin g that period were as constrained
as in Kürecik. The loc al newspapers and the publications of Tunceli Solidarity Asso ciations
point out infrastructura l shortfalls such as lack o f access to electricity even in the villages
immediately around D ersim cit y center,

350

the closure of roads linking villages for half a year
due to snow,

351

the suspension of edu cation du e to we ather conditions , and e conomic
concerns.

352

Due to econo mic hardships and the po litical peculiarities of the region, states Ali
Baysa l, the editor of Hal kın Sesi , a local newspaper in the 1970s, Dersim was regarded as a
place o f ex ile for the rest of the countr y and that is wh y state offi cials would not a cce pt
placement there.

353

Since the 1950s, with continuous securitization and disinvestment poli cies resulting in
high unemplo y ment, immigration to European countries had be en a w ay to break f rom the
vicious circle of povert y and state violence. This was also the case in Dersim. Local newspapers
such as Demokrat Tunceli (Democratic Tunceli ), the first of its kind and financed b y the
Democra tic Part y , reflect ed this grow ing interest in Europe. Considering that thi s was a two-
page local newspaper in A2 format, the space reserved for Europ ea n news is telling. I n 1953
Demokrat Tunceli proudl y announced that Fethi Ülkü from Dersim was b ecoming a member
of a European Council (we do not know which council this refers to),

354

and Ha san Remzikul u ,
a deput y of De rsim was going to Europe.

355

Another group of news it ems co ncerns Europ ea n
politics. For example the famine in East Germa n y in 1953

356

a nd the r eturn of Ernst Wollveber
into East Germany’s political scene

357

were covered. The final group of n ews items is about the
Europe-Tur ke y relations hip. Various loc al news pape rs covered, for insta nce, the goods that
would be sold to Germany under new trade agreements

358

or the trainin g that German soldiers
would rece ive in Turke y .

359

Along with clues to prevalent economic hardship, in Kaypakkaya ’s rep ort we have
depictions of an almost total mobili zation where e veryone , including children and women, was

350

Demirdağ, Nuri. “Çı karken...” Dersim: Tunceli Kültü r Dern eği Yayın Orga nı , Ankara, 196 8.

351

Örtün, Kazım. “ Bir T unceli’liden”. Tunceli Ge cesi , Istanbul, 1960, pp:5 and 1 1.

352

De m ir, Bedri . “Gen çlerin Gö revi”. Der sim: Tunceli Kültür Derneği Yayın Organı , Ankara, 1968.

353

Baysal, A li. “Tunceli S ürgün Yeri Değildir”, Halkın Sesi , 19 A ugust 197 1.

354

“ Fethi Ülkü Avrupa Konseyine iştirak ed iyor.” Demokrat Tu nceli , J uly 1 1953, Elazığ: Bingöl Matba ası.

355

“Milletvekilimiz Ha san Remz ikulu Avrupa’ya gitti “, Demo krat Tunceli , September 11, 19 53, T un celi:
Tunceli Matbaa sı.

356

“Doğu Alman y a ’da açlık sı kıntısı”, Demokrat Tunce li , Septe m b er 9, 1953 , Tunceli: Tunceli Matbaa sı.

357

“Doğu Alman y a ’yı perde arkasında n idare etmiş olan Ernst W ollveber” Demokrat Tu nceli , June 1 19 53,
Elazığ: Bingöl Matb aası.

358

“Almanya’ya çeşitli mal ihraç ed iy o ruz“, Demokrat Tu nceli , Sep tember 24, 1953 , Tunceli: T unceli Matbaası.

359

“200 Alman havacısı B andırma’da eğiti m görecek”, Tu n celi Postası, J un e 6, 1 959, T un celi: Hıdıroğlu
Matbaası.

brimming with revolutionar y spirit . It also gives clues about wh at was understood as the
obliteration of relig ious subjug ation. While acknowledg ing that Alevis were subjected to
oppressive state policies as the other of the S unni Turkish founda tional subject, Ka y pakka y a
criticizes both Alevi religious figures and practices. Despite the f act that Alevis could never
ga in official reco g nition beyond bein g an element of “cultural diversit y , ” in Ka y pakka y a’s
account it is taken a s an oppressive force at the local political level. While leftist org aniz ations
were getting popular a mong Dersim ’s inhabita nts, the realm of religiosity , referred to as
superstition or madness b y m y interlo cutor Zülfikar, weakened during th e 1970s. Youn g er
Alevis turned to leftist ideologies in the 1960s and 1970s, and th e Alevi religious authorities
started to be portrayed a s “charlatans exploiting ordinary people.”

360

To contex tualize this image, of religious fi gure s as charlatans, I tu rn to a nother of m y
interlocutors. Mahmut Dede (85), was a survivor of 1938 and a w ell-re spected religious fi g ure
both among Dersim ’s inhabitants and its diaspora in Germany . He was from the Kuresan hol y
lineage which is believed to be a continuation of the lineage of the Prophet Muhammed. He
arrived in German y in 19 62 as a part of the wave o f migrant work ers ( Gastar beiter) , and became
an important figure in th e Alevi diaspora. He contributed to several pie ce s of research on the
region. While recounting his enchantment with the left and participation in local politics in the
1960s Mahmut Dede described the leftist intervention on devotional practices and reli g ious
figures as the second r upture followin g the state violence of 19 37 – 38:
Mahmut Dede: […] T he state committed the Massacre [Dersim Gen ocide] but could not abolish the
sense o f ikrar , pirlik - talipli k [master-disciple ties] . We , the lefto vers, we came b ack and
reestablished our or der. But… what happened in ’ 65? We turned out to be leftists ( lau gh ing). Here
is the sal vation! Yo u k now, we are al w a ys in searc h of salv ati on. This dede is exploiting, t his ziyaret
is superstition…
Çiçek: Did the le ftist wind also knock at your door?
Mahmut Dede : Ah , o f course! We started around 1965 , when we were studying… thanks to our
professors. T hey were teaching u s manners. We destro y ed ikrar , ziyaret , pir . We fo ught ag ainst eac h
other. In the na me o f salvatio n… [ …] it i s heroin, this is irrational… [re ferring to religious b elie fs
and practices].

361

Describing how survivo rs of the Dersim Genocide in 1938 came b ack when t he ban on returning
to De rsim’s villag es was lifted in 1949, Mahmut De de points to a second rupture in the Dersim
belief system. This time it was not initiated by the state but b y its opponents: the leftwing
opposition of Dersim. B y putting together the se two ruptures Mahmut Dede implies a
comparability between st ate-sponsored destruction and leftist mobi lization. This was the socio-

360

Markus Dressler, “Religio -Se cular Metamorphoses: T he Re - Making of Turkish Alevism,” Journa l of the
American Aca demy of R eligio n 76, no. 2 (2008): 2 80 – 311.

361

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Mah mut Dede and Sa m i i n Berlin, Dece m b er 2 017.

political atmosphere in which Şe y wuşen b ecame a pa rt of ever y d ay life , in which he left his
house in Beydami villag e and start living on the streets of Dersim.
Discoverin g m adness : How Şey wuşen became a popular m ad m an
After a ttending the celebration of Gağan

362

at the Berlin Cemevi

363

in December 2017,
Mahmut Dede took me to a coffeeshop near the Cemevi in Kreuzberg, where we were g reeted
with a picture of Deli Aziz. Deli Aziz (Figure 5) was a homeless Kurdish- Alevi madman, to
whom were attributed prophecies. He became a well-known figure of Erzincan and died in
1994.

Figure 5: The p ortr ait of Deli Aziz hanging on the wall of a Kreuzber g coffee shop
Entering the coffeeshop , Mahmut Dede said: “Welcome to our colorful world, which is full of
madness and holiness [ delilik ve kutsallık ].” While choosing from a menu covered with
photos of Deli Aziz, we started talking about the madmen of Dersim, and the historical
config uration in which th ey li ved.
Çiçek: D o y ou kno w Şeywuşen personall y ?

362

Gağan is a religio us celebration wh ich occ urs after three da ys of fas ting on the Tuesda y , Wednesday and
Thursda y following Dece m b er 2 1 . (Erdal Gezik, Gağan, Hızır, Kara Çarşamba ve Hawtem al/Heftemal: Bir
Takvimin Analizi
https://www.acade mia.edu/3241 0436/Ga%C4%9Fan_H%C 4%B1z%C4%B 1r_Kara_ %C 3%87ar%C5%9Fa m b a_
ve_Hawtemal_Hef temal ). Khal m eans old in Kırmançki and Gağa n is the last month o f the year. Accordin g to
Kemal Kahra m a n, Ga ğan can b e interpreted as a ne w year celebratio n. (Kemal Kahraman, Gağan:Unutul may a
Yüz Tut mu ş bir Dersi m Geleneği http://metinkahra m an.blo gcu.com/khal -gagan- unutulmaya - yuz -tutmus-bir-
dersi m- gelenegi/282 1887)

363

Cemevi , which literall y means house of gatheri ng, is the name of t he Alevi worship place .

Mahmut Dede: Where do you know my relative from? (laughing) O f course I know him.
Çiçek: W ho ever set foo t in D ersim wh o doesn’t kno w ab out Şeywuşen? (laughing) Do you kno w
his life stor y ?
Mahmut Dede: Well, he wasn’t so o lder than me, was born in 192 6 – 27 probably .
Çiçek: 193 0.
Mahmut Dede: Ah yes, maybe . But a bit ear lier I guess.
Çiçek: T hat is what is written on his grave stone.
Sami: Official record s ar e not so m uch r eliable in o ur region, you know i t, right? ... The sta t e official
could o nly co me a fter t he s now melt s a nd when he as ks when the b aby was born he gets answers
like “it was the month of Xızır. ” (laughing)
[…]
Mahmut Dede: He was fro m the Be y d amı village. He had one si ster, B eser, and three b rothers; Ali
Hayda r, Yusu f and Baki. … He w as wor king in road co nstruction.

364

Yusuf Cengiz (1955 – 2018), the founde r of Özgürlük ve Demokrasi P artisi ( ÖDP , Freedom and
Democracy P arty), Dersi m branch, and the former head of the Chamber of Comm erc e and
Industry of Dersim, also knew Ş eywuşen from the years he had work ed in road c onstruction in
the late 19 50s. “He was working as a worker of my uncle. Road construction… y ou cannot do
it [this work] for ins tance (laughing), it r equires s treng th. M y uncle said s everal times that he
was a ver y hard - working worker.”

365

I n a documentar y shot b y Egemen Adak and Hira Selma
Kalkan about Şe y wuşen, his childhood f riend Hüsey in Kar gın also e mphasize d how hard
working he was : “Three people could not do w hat he could accomplish, he w as that hard
working. He was very honest.”

366

While Ş ey wuşen ’s famil y m ember s s a y he was a construction wo rker, there is also a
widesprea d stor y that he was a mason.

367

This is the version Nurettin Aslan recounts in his book
Dersim’in Delileri [ Madmen of Dersim] in which he collected stories about the madmen of
Dersim. Nurettin Aslan writes in the introduction that , as a refugee in G ermany, he could not
go to Dersim and combined “his memoirs” with accounts collected from elderl y Dersimi s. He
had not met Şey wuşen in person.

368

Fortunately, I had the c hance to condu ct interviews with relatives of Şe y w uşen , such a s
Çiçek Te y z e (85), a dist ant cousin, whom I visited at he r home. Çiçek Te y z e wa s accompanied
by her son Mustafa (50), a bus driver who described him self as a şöförolog (driver-log) due to
his contribution to most recent research on Dersim, and Mustafa’s un cle Zülfikar (55 ), who wa s
curre ntl y livin g between Köln and De rsim. T elling Ş eywuşen’s life story in the Kırmancki
language, Çiçe k Te y z e said that his wife Yamos M avi had a girl before Şe y wuşen went for his

364

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Mah mut Dede and Sa m i i n Ber lin, December 2 017.

365

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Yusu f Cengiz in Der sim, May 2015 .

366

From the docu mentary directed by Eg eme n Adak and Hira Sel m a Kal kan entitled Insan ın Deli Dediği , shot in
2008.

367

Nurettin Asla n, Dersim’in Diva ne Delileri , İ letişim Ya yınları (İstanbul: İletisim Yayınları , 2015), 12.

368

Aslan, Dersim’in Divane Deli leri , 8.

obligatory military se rvice , and after he came back they had another child, a boy .

369

But, when
he returned, “he was not talking much, he w as behaving differentl y than bef ore. He developed
some kinds of obsessions. He had some fits of jea lous y as we ll. He was jealous of his wife. ”

370

Mustafa stated th at fem ale relatives would create s cene s that could trigger his fits of jealous y :
“For instance, I heard f rom man y Be y d amlı that the wife of his older b rother dressed up like a
man and lay down ne xt to Yamos Te y z e [Şeywuşen’s wife ]. ”

371

In the do cumentary on Şey wuşen’s life called I nsanın Deli Dediği , Hat ice Tat ar, a
nephew, also referred to these fits of jealousy : “For example, one day h e boug ht a bracelet for
her. And the other day he came to ask who gave it to her. He boug ht a dress for her, and the day
after he asked who b rought this dress to you. H e us ed to h ave th ose kinds of j ealousy atta cks .”

372

While Şeywuşe n’s relatives mentioned jealous y , in the documentar y his ex-wife Yamos Mavi
account ed for their marriage and divorce as follows:
I was 13, 1 4, or 15 — how would a gir l know? So the y said, and g a ve me [to Şey wuşen]. T hen we had
two c hildren, a girl a nd a boy. He didn’t co me ho me that o ften , wander ing aro und. Hanging out
do w nto wn. When he came ho me, he d isturbed us. […] He was d isturbed even when he was single, he
was wandering arou nd. T hey d idn’t tell us, w e d idn’t know. Nobody told my mother, either. We had a
rayber ,

373

they were giving prayers. T hey said he’s a bit distur bed/sick. He called him ho m e, said that
this w oma n doesn’t hav e a relationship with him, in our language. This w o man is free, sh e shall go and
marry another. If it is a sin, it b elongs to the ra yber ; he is the w ise one. And then I didn’t go.

374

Yamos Mavi’s description of her divo rce d emonstrates that th e pir-talip

375

relationship was
present and efficiently regulating ever y d ay lif e. Instead of getting a divorce from Ş ey wuş en due
to his “mental illness” under the Turkish civil law, she went to h er pir and got his approval to
divorce Şe y w uşen and marr y someon e else. S uch r eligious practices which are woven into
kinship relations and embedded in nature were re -established by ge nocide survivors after the y
return ed to their villages after 1949.

369

Referring to the inter view I conducted with Çiçe k Teyze and Mustafa in Dersi m , April 2014.

370

Referring to the inter view I conducted with Çiçe k Teyze and Mustafa in Dersi m , April 2014. So m e parts of
the interview was in Kir m a ncki and tran slated into T urkish b y M ustafa durin g the interview.

371

Referring to the inter view I conducted with Çiçe k Teyze and Mustafa in Dersi m , April 2014.

372

From the docu mentary directed by Eg eme n Adak and Hira Sel m a Kal kan entitled Insan ın Deli Dediği , shot in
2008.

373

Rayber is one of the three categories of religio us dignitary in Dersi m Alevism that refers to the guide, the one
who shows the pat h.

374

From the documentar y directed by Egeme n Adak and Hira Sel m a Kalka n entitled Insanın Deli Dediği, shot in
2008.

375

Pîr is one of the three t ypes of religious di gn itar y in Dersim Alevism t hat refers to wh o le ads the divine
justice. Pîr s are b elieved to be the d escendants of the holy lineage ( ocak ) p resum ably co ming from Khorasa n and
Daylam arrived in Ders im in 12 th ce ntu ry. Ta lip is the disciple of the pîr whose lo yalty is structured thro ugh
kinship relations t hat are based on the holy lineage.

After Yamos Mavi left Beydamı village, Şe ywuşen left home and started living on the
streets of Dersim, as Zülfikar narrated:
I remember the p eriod when he ca m e back from the military ser vice. … I r emember hi m as an ag gressive
person. He stabbed his wife o nce… and then she le ft t he house. Mustafa ’s au nt r aised the ir two kids,
she organized their marriage etc. […] You kno w in fe udal societies there are never -endi ng di sputes over
land and ani mals. I n one of tho se daily cla shes, Sey Uşen Amca [uncle ; referring to Şe ywuşen ] threw a
stone at İs m ail Amca’ s head [one of the villagers, who b elongs to the same aşiret , tribe] . The guy got
half- paralyzed, he couldn ’t speak after w ar ds. Can you i m a gine, no one made a complaint about Se y
Uşen Amca. No one would go to the gendar m erie in our vill age, but it also sho ws t he valu e they give
to human life, rig ht? After that event, Se y U şen Amca left t he vi llage, started livin g in t he city -center .
(April 2014 Dersim ).
Ze liha Te y z e (60), whom I met in Gola Ç etu, a pop ular sacred plac e in the city center, recounted
that aft er Şe y wuşen l eft the house, he sta ye d in the mountains for a while.

376

According to
Zülfikar, during the late 1960s, when he first came to the cit y center, Şe y w uşen was perceived
as an object of humor:
Peop le made him crazier in th e center. T he societ y tri ggered his a ggression. His first de gree relatives
were mocking him, b y callin g him piç [bastard] they were making him a ngry as i f they were watchin g
cinema, they were making fun . If you b ehave in that w ay to a nor m al person you will dr ive him crazy
as well.

377

During this decade h e w as twice confined b y his famil y in the Elazığ Mental Hospital . Zülfika r
said :
He w as kept in the hospital for a while… where he w a s subjected to all kinds of tortures s uch as
electroshock, bastinado or being beaten b y nightstick s. These w ere the contemporar y treatments app lied
in the mental hospitals back then... disciplini ng peop le through violence. T hen, he returned to the villa ge
for a short p eriod, I rem e m ber h e w a s cal m after all those tortures. It w as as if h e w as co ming b ack fro m
prison. […] He couldn ’ t sta y long i n the village a nd that i s when he went to the ce nter in t he early
19 70s.

378

Since Şeywuşen’s file in the mental hospital was lost, I do not h ave much information on the
torture to which Zülfikar referr ed . W hen I asked him and Mustafa to el aborate, they told me the
story of Ka ypa kkaya being exposed to torture and his assassination in Diya rbakır Prison, which
was officiall y reported a s suicide.

379

This stor y intermingled with their own experience of
imprisonment and the ge nera l atmosphere of despair i nside and outsi de prison. Süleyman (72)
from Ovacık district of Dersim , who was from t he Derviş Cemal hol y lin eage, and work ed at
the Elazığ Ment al Hospital until the mid -1980s as a caretaker, said no more than that Şe y wuşen
did not li ke the medi cal tr ea tment he rece ived in hospit al and fled twice. When hospitalized for

376

Referring to my co nversation w ith Zeliha Teyze in Dersim, April 2014.

377

Excerpt fro m the inter view I co nducted with Zülfikar and Mustafa in Dersim, A pril 20 14.

378

Excerpt fro m the inter view I co nducted with Zülfikar and Mustafa in Dersim, A pril 20 14.

379

https://bianet.org/ ku rdi/insa n- hak lari/1 14602 -isken ce- karsiti-mucadele - ve -ibrahi m-kaypakka y a -dos yasi Every
event organized to commemorate Kaypakkaya is still cri m inalized by the Turkish securit y forces and attacked.
https://bianet.org/bia net/biamag/12 2347 -kaypakkaya-nin -iskence-dosyasi - 37 -yasinda

the first time no on e knew about him . How ever, a fter his fi rst escape h e became kno wn to the
hospital staff. In his subsequent hospitalization, he was known both to hospital worke rs and to
Dersimis living in the city center, who would come to visit him occa sionally .

380

After his stay in the hospital, Şey wuşen came to the c it y center and started living on the
streets of Dersim. Hüse y in Tatar, anoth er dist ant relative, said that “people embraced him in
the cit y . The y were taking care of his clothes, this hygiene, I don’t k now what, Tunceli
inhabitants were doing all those. The y took care of him more than us.

381

Ferit Demir, a w ell -
known journalist working for local and national press, described to me an ordinary da y fo r
Şeywuşen :
He w as waking up aro un d B aran P harmacy, his usual spo t for sleeping, when he was fee ling h ungry.
There were a couple of restaurant owners in t he 19 70s who w er e taki ng care of him. He would enter
one o f those [resta urants] an d ap proach someone he li ke d and eat his food. Asking permission and
whatsoever ( laughing) — no w ay.

382

Mustafa and Zülfikar s aid that the restaurant o wners were dis ciples of the K uresa n hol y lineage
and due to their lo y alt y and respect for lineage, took care fo r Şey wuşen. Ferhat Tunç (1964– ),
a famous musician from Dersim, described his fir st encounter with Ş ey wu şen when he was a
child and visited one of those restaurants:
I supp ose I was 8 o r 9 when I first enco un tered Şe ywuşen. A bit further do wn there i s a smal l
restaurant, Huzur Re staurant, I w as ea ting t here. I had o rdered soup for myself. Whi le ea ting my
soup Sey Uşe n app eared n ext to m e. He came, hoop he took the soup bo w l and put it in fron t of h im.
He started eatin g (lau ghing). And I was very young, I got a fraid. … T hat is ho w I enco untered my
childhood hero (laughing). I got afraid , intim idated a b it but then he loo ked at m e and to ld w it hout
looking at me don’t b e afraid , I a m j ust hu ngr y . … In my schoo l years he b ecame a part of my
everyday life.

383

Kamer (60), a bus driver on the route between Elazığ and Dersim , told m e that wh en he first
began smoking , he woul d buy a separate packet of cigarettes for Şe y wuşen:
I rem e mber, in my first week as a smoker he approac hed me and asked for cigarettes. I felt so honored
and gave him the whole packe t (laughing). Cigarette s were not so expensi ve in t hose days, in the ’ 70s
(laughing). Late ’ 70s... You kno w he was n ot approac hing a nyone. People w er e attemptin g to give hi m
m o ney, ci garette I don ’t know what , raki , if he was not li king t hem, he was re fusing. ... He never took
m o ney from anyone. ... T hen I started carr y i ng a packet [ of cigarettes] for him.

384

When Şeywuşe n moved to the cit y ce nter the ma in places for socialization were Palavra Square
(L ie Square as it is widel y known, but officially n amed Republic Square) where the leftist

380

Referring to conversatio ns I had w ith Süle ym an in Elaz ığ , March 2 015.

381

From the docu mentary directed by Eg eme n Adak and Hira Sel m a Kal kan entitled Insanı n Deli Dediği, shot in
2008.

382

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Ferit De mir in Der sim , March 2 015.

383

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Ferhat T unç in Dersim, March 2015 .

384

Excerpt fro m the i nt ervie w I conducted with Kamer i n Ders im, May 2014 .

groups con g regated, and coffeeshops whe re peo ple spent most of their ti me outside. Hıdır
Demirtaş, the editor of t he local newspaper Hal kın Sesi [The Voice of People], wrote in his
column in August 1971 that the most profitable business in Dersim was to run a coffee shop
because “ever y on e spends the whole da y in a coffee shop and no on e works. There is n o
entertainment other than a cinema and coffeeshops .”

385

Plausible reas ons for go ing m ad in Dersim
During a period of leftist political mobilization, the lack of economic means and options
other than sitti ng in a coffeeshop or hanging out in Palavra Square, the cit y center b eca me
home to Şe y wuşen. W ith his shabb y appe arance, torn clothes and ho lding five lit
cigarette s in his hand, Şe y wuş en would hang out on the streets of De rsim, accruing the
stories which would later make him “the most famous madman of Dersim” as Nure ttin
Aslan puts it in his book on Dersim’s madmen.

386

When he came to the city c enter after
his hospitalization, he was considere d alread y “mad” b y most of my int erlocutors. The
reasons for his madness, as narrated b y m y interlocutors, we re numerous.
Mahmut: Dede : […] He w as working in road constru ction. Did not w or k after m il itary ser vice… He
lost it afterwards.
Çiçek: Do y ou kno w what hap pened?
Sami: The op tions are endless, the state pro mises plenty (lau gh in g).
Mahmut Dede : W here would you kn o w … But c ould be torture, insults…
Sami : So unds like the stor y o f my uncle… who ca m e b ack s ick fro m military service, not talking,
not socializing w ith a ny o ne.

387

While mi l itary se rvice was given as the reason fo r “ losing it ” b y Şe ywuşen’s relatives, those
who knew him before h e left home and b ecame a publi c figure and Dersim ’s inhabitants who
encountered him afte r his move to th e cit y center a ssociated his madness wit h various incidents
of state violence. Zülfü S elca n, one o f the first lin guists to specialize in the Kirmancki language,
and currently the he ad of the Zaza Language and Literature Department at Munzur University
in Dersim, assert ed that Şeywuşen’s madness w as an out come of b eing born between two
catastrophe s:
Imagine bein g born in 1930 in an Ar m e nian v illage o f Der sim… Before the wounds o f the Ar m enia n
Genocide w er e healed, […] as a kid, y ou exper ience 1938 . […] His grandpar ents had protecte d
Armenians in their ho use s […] that w as why the state in tervened in such b loody wa ys into his village
and its surroundin g. What do you e xpect a sensitive perso n to beco m e.

388

385

Demirtaş Hıdır. “Ilimizde eğlence y er leri” Halkın Sesi . 1 1 August 197 1.

386

Aslan, Dersim’in Divane Deli leri , 12.

387

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Sa mi and Mahmut Dede in Berlin, Dec ember 2017.

388

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Zül fü Selcan i n Dersim, Mar ch 2015.

Ali Tuluk (74), who li ved in Elazığ which has a significant population from Dersim, and who
was the dede of the Pertek Cemevi, associated Şe y wuşen’s madness with the Dersim Genocide.
“We can talk about violen ce now… It w asn’t the ca se for so lon g. … so long, the Alevis suffered
so much from violence… that we cannot speak of, cannot ex press. Şe ywuşen witnesse d 1938.
What else is needed for going mad? ”

389

F or Şena y (24), who w as from Ho zat (a district of
Dersim) and who was studying at Munzur Unive rsity in May 2015, 1938 wa s the reason for
Şeywuşen’s madne ss but in her narration she emphasized the Kurds rather than Alevis:
I told you before, ... I am really interested in Se yit Hüseyin’s li fe story too. … I learned that h e
witnessed the los s of a close relative during the Ge nocide [193 7 – 38]. ... I really w o nder what needs
to happen to stop our suff erin g! ? Collective madness for all the Kurds? Do you t hink coll ectively
going mad wo uld help?

390

What Tuluk and Şenay put forward is a form of prox imity b etwee n Alevis/K urds and Ş eywuşe n.
Şeywuşe n was one w ho witnessed, ex perie nced and suffer ed from the violence that
Alevis/Kurds were subjected to. A ll Alevis/Kurds had a possibil ity to become Şe y wuşen , and
to lose it , to go mad, due to their experienc e of state violence. In that sense, thi s narrat ive not
only mak es Şey wuşen “ one of them ,” it embrac es him as the embodiment of a specific history .
Şeywuşen ’s relatives narra ted the experiences of 1915 and 1938 using a diffe rent set of
references:
Çiçek : What ab out the story o f Şeywuşen losing a close r elative during ’ 38?
Zülfikar : I didn’t know that. (laughing) […] I learn so much fro m you ab out my relati ves. (laughing) […]
On our side [ bizim tarafta of the village] not much happ ened… compared to the ot her par t which is across
the road. … T he surrounding o f Beydam was calmer.
Mustafa : T hen m y family sh o uld all have gone m ad (laughi ng) [ …] my two gra nd fathers, gr andmother, m y
aunt and my father ’s uncle were b urned alive in Türüşmek.
Zülfikar: The massacre happe ned on the other side o f th e road … not much happened on our side.
[….]
Mustafa: But there are also s to ries f r om be fore ’38. There w a s a Christian missionary school here. … Brad
Pitt is my relati ve. Ca n’t you s ee that we look si milar (la ughing ) […] Durin g 1915 , the Christian missionar y
school took kids to US A; the d ad o f my gran d father was o ne of the m . In Be y damı village peo ple were i n
contact with those i n USA unt il they died. … I remember letter exchanges from my child hood.”

391

Along with the genocidal violence, the 1980 coup d’é tat and the state violence that escalate d in
the aftermath of the coup in the 1990s were also mentioned as reasons for Şeywuşen’s madness.
Derviş (60 ), who was imprisoned with his father after the 1980 coup du e t o their involvement
in the Maoist r evolutionary organization MLKP , gave the followin g account of Şe y wuşen’s
madness:

389

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Ali T uluk in E lazığ , May 2015 .

390

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Şenay in Der sim, Ma y 2 015.

391

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Zülfikar and Mustafa i n Dersim, April 2014.

I r emem ber him [Şe ywuşen], hangi ng out in P alavra Square when we [po litically ac tive peo ple in the
19 70s] were gatheri ng there to stand a gainst… w hatever n eed ed to b e protested ( laughing). […] He w a s
not mad back the n. He was h om eless, yes… but… not rea lly mad. Mad and homeless are different
things, right? […] Whe n I went out of prison fi ve years later [ in 19 85] he was different. … I asked
around and peo ple to ld m e t hat he was subjected to torture after t he coup. […] Living o n the streets of
Dersim in the after math of t he 198 0 coup…. Not so ea sy , b elieve me.

392

Along with direct associ ations with incidents of state violence, the madness of Şe y wuşen w as
described in relation to his wife’s betra y al. Ali (48), another bus driver on the route between
Elazığ and Dersim, told a stor y which illust rates how it be ca me a reference point for going mad:
“Be sides all that, imagine you cau g ht y ou r wife with your brother… It is like d y in g. But imagine
dude [ moruk ], y ou r wife with your brother. It is terrible.”

393

I n m y int erview wi th Yusuf Cengiz,
an independent researcher and author of two books on the histor y of D ersim, he deliberatel y
emphasized that Ş eywuşen ’s militar y service experience did not leave any sp ace for rumo rs.
“Before doing militar y s ervice h e was workin g in road constru ction as m y uncle’s worker. H e
was a h ard worker. But when he came back he was sick. [ …] Do not take serious ly an y other
story told about him.”

394

In the documentary b y E ge men Adak and Hira Selma Kalkan, hi s
childhood friend Hüse y i n Ka rgın retold the stor y of Şey wuşen’s sickness but avoid ed g iving
specific reasons: “Three people c ould not do what he could accomplish, he was that
hardworking. He wa s ver y honest. Then… May God not show this to anyone … An instability
occurred… for some reasons. He descended into th is state. But ev en in that state he didn’t harm
any one.”

395

Referr ing to the widespread rumors about Şeywuşen catching his wife with his brother
when he returned from the military se rvice, Z ülfikar stated:
There is a lot of gossip about Şe ywuşen Amca, p robably you heard abo ut it alrea dy[…]. But what
would you e xpe ct from a co mmunity that does not pr oduce anythin g other than gossip… I m agi ne
that t here is no telev ision, no electricity, no proper r outes for going to the cit y, not hing... […] He
was staying at his brother’s flat when he returned to his village.

396

Interestingly , th e relatives of Şeywuşen whom I refer to here were in touch with the
interlocutors who narrate d the stor y differentl y . Mustafa and Zülfikar wo uld hang out in the
city center, and drink tea at the S eyy id Rız a Square , named after the installation of a statue of
the eponymous Alevi leader (see Chapter I V ), and chat with those who associated Şe y wuş en’s
life stor y with the events of 1915, 1938 or 1980 or related it to th e betra y al o f his wife. Althou gh

392

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Derviş in Ders im, May 2015 .

393

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Ali in Der sim, Ma y 201 4.

394

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Yusuf Cen giz in Dersim, May 2014.

395

From the docu mentary directed by Eg eme n Adak and Hira Sel m a Kal kan entitled Insan ın Deli Dediği , shot in
2008.

396

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Zül fikar in Dersi m , April 20 14.

those others knew that the family had a different account, the y preserved their version of the
story of Şey wuşen.
Failed m as culinity : The glue k eeping 191 5, 1938, 1 98 0 and betray al together

The accounts of Şe y wuşen’s madness— not b eing able to deal with th e experience and/or
consequences of the state violence of 1915, 193 8 and 1980, not successfull y fulfilling his
obligation to serve in the arm y , failin g to “look after ” or “protect” his wife, and having fits of
jealousy — intersec t with the g ende red construction of male subjectivit y in Turkey. While the
accounts of bet rayal w ere silenced b y some interlocutors, those linking state violence with
madness were e xpressed without difficulty. I n that sense, in the re pertoire of lunacy in De rsim,
going mad a fter being ex posed to state viol ence appear ed to b e a plausible re ason for “losin g
it , ” while a be tra y al was not.
Against the tendenc y to frame violence as an indication of “political decay” I approach
state viole nce as a n “integ ral part of a cc umulation of power b y th e na tional state apparatus.”

397

Following Cha rles Till y ’s model of state -for mation

398

through w ar and st ate monopolization of
violence, it is possible to sa y that the two genocidal events of 1915 and 1938 pla y a foundational
role in the governing toolkit of the Turkish state . The construction of Turkey ’s national subject
has proce ed ed through experiences of state po wer whi ch massivel y mobil ized its subjects
through p articipation in, or bein g subject to , stat e violence. C onsequently the ex perie nce of
state violence during the formation of the Turkis h sta te is fundamental to the construction of
ge ndered citizenship which solidifies in the m y th of the military nation ( ordu-millet or asker-
ulus ). Failing to cope wit h the experiences of 191 5 and 1938, and going mad in the aftermath,
implies a failure in bec oming a Turkish citizen.
The experience o f mi litary s ervice is also complicated when Şe y wuşe n’s ethnic
background is taken into consideration. Wearing a uniform and taking up arms for the arm y
responsible for the destruction of one ’s hometown in itself evokes emotional intensity if not an
identity crisis. Since 1909, with the ex ception of non -Muslim citizens in the Ottoman army,
every male citiz en in the region has at least held a weapon if not made actual use of it or — if
refusing to do so —has been exposed to humiliation in order to get a doctor’ s report

397

Youssef Cohen, Br ian R. Brown and A. F. K. Organski “T he Paradoxical Nature Of State Maki ng : T he
Violent Creatio n Of Order,” The American Political Scien ce Review 7 5, no. 4 ( Dec., 1981), 901 -910.

398

Charles Till y . "Coercio n, capital, a nd European states, A D 9 90 – 1990." In Collective Violen ce, Contentio us
Politics, and Social Chang e , pp. 140 -154. (Routledge, 20 17).

“diagnosing” homosexualit y or ph y sical deficiency . The male subject is expec ted, first, to be
part of the arm y where he will trans cend his eth nic, class and gender po sition in the social
hierarchy in order to become a part of a la rger hierarchical organization. Dersim , the “ abscess”
of the Ottoman Empire and later th e Turkish Republic , was t he loc ation that r esisted
conscription for the lon gest time . Until mi litary and bureaucratic institutions were established
in the aftermath of the D ersim Genocide in 1938, conscription and taxation were not re g ulated
in the region.

399

In the historical construction of Turkish nationa lism the core belie f is that e ver y Turk is
born a soldi er. The army stands at the center of the national constellation.

400

The m y th of the
military n ation helps establishing the male ’s dominance in the famil y based on his experience
of mili tary service. The political -military difference produced b y th e state th roug h the exclusion
of women from the arm y is propagated as a “n atural” cultural dif ference

401

which is transformed
into the superiorit y of the husband based on the fact that h e possesses the knowledge of the
barracks, in other words, the knowledge of the nation, of arms, of machines, of the homeland .

402

Being domi nated b y the male partner de fines the woman as an object to be protected. Th e state
privilege s the husband w ho carri es the burden of protecting the woman and the honor of the
family on the level o f juri sdiction by reducing punishment in cases where he commits domesti c
violence becaus e a woman cheated on him. This is how the discours e of “protecting the woman ”
contributes to the perpetual reproduction of the stat e instit ution’s mobilization around the notion
of honor. After successful ly completing mi litary service the man is acknowledged as the r eis
[leader] of his nuclear famil y . I n this way the male subject can become a p olitical actor in the
newly established state without carr y in g the hierarchies of the arm y structure which is
fundamentally base d on lar g er family structures.

403

What happens to thos e who manage the process unsuccessfull y ? Ever y d ay language and
practice s are illustrative of this. A man who has not y et finished, or who refuses his duty of
military service, is not c ounted as a real man.

404

The structural reflection of thi s is that a ma n

399

Hüseyin Aygün , De rsim 1938 ve Zorunlu İska n: Telgraflar, Dilekçeler, Mektu plar, Fotoğraflar ( Ankara:
Dipnot Ya y ı nları, 200 9).

400

Ayşe Gül Altına y, The Myth of th e Military Nation : Militarism, Gen der, and Education in Turkey (Ne w Yo rk:
Palgrave Mac m illan, 200 4).

401

Altınay, The Myth of the Milita ry Nation ,

402

Altınay, The Myth of the Milita ry Nation , 78.

403

Nükhet Sir m a n, “Gender Constructio n and Nationalist D iscourse: Det hroning the Father in the Earl y T urkish
Novel” in Gender a nd Iden tity C onstruction : Women of Cent ral Asia, the Cau casus and Turkey , ed. F. Acar, and
A. Guneş -Ay ata ( Leiden:Brill, 20 00). Deniz Kand iyoti, Cari yeler, Bacilar, Yurttaslar; Ki mlikler ve Toplumsal
Dönüşü mler (Istanbul: Metis Yayinlari, 199 6).

404

Altınay, The Myth of the Milita ry Nation , 78.

should finish his national dut y in o rder to have a r eg ul ar job and/or to get marr ied. Becoming a
man requires successfull y be coming a part o f the militar y hierarch y and bearing th e
consequences of joinin g this structure. The com pulsory experience of li ving in a militar y
barrack for 6 – 18 months, being trained to kil l, ind octrinated with the ideological justifications
for the existence o f a strong arm y , subj ected to violenc e superior r ank s often results in
psyc hological problems. I n the absence of recognized categ ori es of “war trauma” or PTSD
within the arm y (se e Chapter I ), those who are not a ble to psychologically or ph ysica ll y endure
this cannot complete the process of becoming a “real man.”
The narrated reasons for Şeywuşen going mad — his inabilit y to cope with the ex perie nce
of state viol enc e, or inabilit y to perform the role of the family leader — are t ied to his failure to
become a man; a failure which is perceived som ber ly . Muz affer (45 ), a photographer with a
studio in the cit y center , who started sellin g Şeywuşen postcards in the late 1980s said of
Şeywuşen: “He was a miserable man. The militar y service… it w as h arder back then. He lost it
at the arm y . […] I t is a pit y . ”

405

For Ulaş (55), who worked at Munzur University, was struck
by on e aspect of Ş eywuşen ’s stor y : “As far as I remember h e caught his wife with someone else
on his return from mi l itary servi ce… His exist en ce on the streets was , in a way, touchin g a
sensitive ground of masculi nity”

406

for those witnessing his life on the streets.
Productive effec t s of violen ce: F o rm ati on o f a new iden tity as m ad
Going mad after an event that sy mboliz ed a rupture was a turning point in Şe y wuş en ’s life. In
this section I look more close ly at the formation of his new subjectivit y as a mad person. If
failed masculinit y was w hat was d estroyed within him b y violence, his transformation points to
a process of c rea ting a new identity as a mad pe rson. I n other wo rds, subjugation to power does
not only take from the individual, it forms her/him: “Power comes up with us from the field of
potential. It ‘informs’ us, it’s intrinsic to our formation, it’s part of our emergence as
individuals, and it emerg es with us – we a ctualize it, as it in - forms us.”

407

This production
process su gg ests that state violence has also productive aspects. We have seen how there is a
strong link betw ee n state violence and m adness. Instead of con centrating o n factual causalit y ,
I c hoose here to focus on the way s in whi ch the e xperience of violence produce new identities.
This choice of focus implies disagreement with the literature wh ich argu es that the state is

405

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Muza ffer in Dersi m , Ma y 2 015.

406

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Ulaş, in Istanb ul, June 201 5.

407

Brian Massumi, “ Navi gating m o vements,” in Hope: new philosophies fo r change, edi. Zournazi, Mary (New
York: Routledge, 2 003).

gradually weakenin g as a n entity.

408

However, I do not ar g ue fo r a vie w which reduces the state
to it s monopol y of violence d estro y in g human and non-human a ctors.

409

Borrowing from
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, m y st arting point is the a ssumption that “st ate power has no
institutional fixity on either theoretical or historical grounds.”

410

This brings us to a point of
perce iving the state be y o nd its institutional and governmental sites.

411

Although the landscape of Dersim is woven through wi th the ex perienc e of excessive
state violence, I would like to highlight it s effects on the creation and reproduction of
subjectivities. I n other words, I t ake state violence itself as a transformative practice that
constructs and reconstructs subjectiviti es.

412

In the massive literature on political subjectivity I
mostl y fo cus on the emotional and affective dynamics of state violence.

413

In discussi ng the
Partition of India in 1947, Veena Das ar g ues that violence c annot be regarded as a solel y
destructive force interrupting ordinar y li fe. C onceptualizing violence as a cultural and social
force , she a rgues that it produces the ordinary.

414

Looking at viol ence as a productive force
allows g oin g bey ond simplistic interpretations wh ere violence is understood as “a to ol wielded
in the pursuit of power.”

415

Instea d of regarding t he state as a tangible social institution or
“stately persona” but rat her as “the sites of every da y li fe, where people attempt to produce
meaning for themselves by app ropriating the politi cal.”

416

This approach explains the proces s
of the affliction of otherness in Dersim, where communal attachment is strongl y linked to a wa y
of making sense of state violence. Using ethno graphic data, I argue that the experience of
ge nocidal violence seem s to pave a way into the cosmology of madness that emerges in the

408

Ajun Appad urai, Modern ity at Large: Cultural Dimen sions o f Globalization (Minneapolis: Universit y of
Minnesota, 19 96). Anna Lowenhaupt T sing, F riction: a n ethnography o f global connection ( Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton Universit y Press, 2005 ).

409

Giorgio Aga m b en, Ho mo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (Stan ford: Stanford Unive rsity Press, 1998 ).

410

Michel- Rolph T rouillot, “The anth ropo logy of the state at the age of globalization: close e ncounters of the
deceptive kind,” Current Anth ropology 41 (2001): 126.

411

Trouillot, “The ant hropology of the state at the a ge of globalization,”

412

Michelle Foucault, “Governmentality,” in Fouca ult Effect: stud ies in go vernmentality edi. G. Burchill, C.
Gordo n 8. P. Miller (Chicago: Uni versity of Chicago P ress, 1991), 87 -104 ; Allen Feld man, Fo rmations of
violence: the narrative of th e body and politica l terror In Northern Irelan d (Chicago: T he University of Chicago
Press, 19 91); Stuart. Hall, “The Local and the Global: Glo balization and Et hn icit y , ” in Cul ture, Globalizatio n
and the W o rld System: Conte mporary Con ditions for the Representation of Id entity , edi. A nthony D. Kin g
(Minneapolis: Uni versity of Minnesota P ress, 1997) .

413

Begona Aretxa ga, States of te rror: Begona Aretxaga’s Essays ed. J oseba Zulaika (Nevada: Uni versity of
Nevada Re no, Basque Studies Program, 2005) ; Veena Das, “Life and Wo rds: Violence and the Descent into the
Ordinar y ”. (Berkele y : U niversit y of Cali fornia Press, 2006 ); Yael Navaro -Ya shin, Faces of the State: Secularism
and P ublic Life in Turkey ( Princeton, 2002).

414

Das, “Life and Wo rds:”.

415

Coronil and S ku rski, St ates of Violen ce , 2 .

416

Navaro-Yashi n, Faces of the State: Secu l arism and Public Life in Turkey , 135.

case o f Şe ywuşe n. In oth er words, the ground on which the atta chment to madness flourishes
was prepare d b y waves of genocidal state-sponsored violence.
In her a nal y sis of the riots that accompanied th e Partition of I ndia, Das emphasizes that
“the bod y did not simply develop its own idiom and its own memor y in re sponse to violence
and trauma as an act of representation; the appropriation of the bod y of the victim for making
memory throu gh the infliction of pain was itself a n important component of the terror.”

417

Th e
reasons given for Şe y w uşen’s madness create a p icture of on e who went mad because he did
not cope well with state viol ence or with the code of masculinity. It is notable that every
significa nt historical refe renc e o f state violence in the histor y of Dersim that Şeywuşe n life
story covers is narrated as a reason for his madness. Based on m y ethn ographic research, I
conceptualize the connection that m y int erlocutors draw between st ate vio lence an d madness
as the infliction of otherness that has bee n attached to the region more broa dly.
To clarif y what I me an b y infliction , I turn to Butler’s use of the Althusserian theorization
of subject formation. Ex ploring the ideological state apparatus Althus ser suggests that ideolog y
“has the function of ‘co nstituting’ concrete individuals as subjects.”

418

Ideology op era tes b y
interpellating individuals, telling them “hey , y ou there,”

419

in a wa y the y recognize. Th is
recognition, respondin g to the interpellation by tur ning back, is at the heart of creating subjects.
By exemplif y in g this process through the en counter with police officer who hails people with
“hey, you ther e , ” Althuss er stresses th at subjection to the law is the precondi tion of the creation
of the subject. Judith Butler complicates the Althusserian notion of subjectivation by
emphasizing the dimensions beyond compulsion into submission out of fear. In the search for
recognition as a subject there is also a desirous a ttachment to author it y th at is at the c ore of the
investment in a hegemonic power structure.

420

I n thi s framew ork, subje ctivation c omes with a n
injury to which the subject is unavoidably attached.
Called b y an i njurious name, I co me i nto social being, a nd bec ause I ha ve a ce rtain in evitable
attachment to existe nce, becau se a certain narcis sism ta kes ho ld o f any ter m that confers e xistence,
I am led to embrace the terms that inj ure me bec ause the y co nstitute me sociall y. As a further
parad ox, then, onl y b y occup ying – b eing occupied b y – that injurious ter m ca n I resist a nd op pose
it, recasting t he p ower that c onstitutes me as the p ower I o ppose. […] Any mobiliza tion against
subjection w il l take su bje ction as its r esource, and that attachment to an in jurious interpellatio n will,

417

Veena Das, C ritical events: an anthropological p erspective on co ntemporary India (New York: Oxford
University Pr ess, 1995), 188.

418

Louis Althusser. “Ideolog y and Ideo logical State Apparatuses” i n Ma pping Id eology , ed. Slavoj Z izek,
(London and Ne w York: Ver so, 1 994), 129.

419

Althusser. “Ideolo gy and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 13 1.

420

Judith P. Butler, The P sychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford Univ ersit y Press,
1997b) .

by way of a necessary alie nated narcissism, become the condition under which re -signifying that
interpellation beco mes possible .

421

Butler suggests that to construct a sociall y performed identity one needs to embrace the injur y
caused by inte rpellation. I n the c ase of Şe y wuşen we see a rejection of holding onto any injury
that constitutes subjecthood. That is madness, the diss olution of one’s identity. He h as not
performe d a c oherent narrative, developed attachment to an incident of state violence or
invested in crea ting his identity aro und an identit y-narrative. In the absence o f pe rsonal
performa nce, the injur y i s attributed to him. Şey w uşen appear s as a mad person, one who “los t
it” durin g the process of being interpellated b y t he state one wa y or another in th e collective
memory, connoting that the injuries of D ersim were projected to him. The incidents of stat e
violence that aim ed to “ manage ” the diff ere nce t hat was located in Dersi m became the reason
for Şey wuş en’s madness : this is what I mean by the affliction of otherness. Şeywuşen appears
as the performance of the inj ury of Dersim, which diffe rs in different narr atives acc ording to
the political standpoint of the interlocutor.
Perform ing the injury: Fl uctuating date s, circular tem poralities
Leaving the translation of madness to the following chapters (Chapter s III and IV), where I
discuss divinit y and monumentaliz ation, I continue here to foc us on the rol e of st ate violen ce
in the stories of Şe y wuşen. One of the first stor ies that emer g ed in m y interviews when I
mention ed Şeywuşen’s name was about him shouting at police off i cers, asking where were his
people, and “did you bri ng back ’38?” when he saw no one else on the streets of Dersim.
Although this part of the stor y line remains almost the same, the setting shows temporal and
contextual variety . For instance, Mahmut Dede remember ed the event as happening in 1969:
There w as t he cem

422

of P ir Sultan.

423

T he state stopped the cem , banned it. I w a s livi ng in the ce nter
back then. Meh met [a friend] went to the cops and explained that it is like a theatre p lay , it is the
cem of P ir Sultan. If y ou go to the door , they shoot. But he did. It w a s in 19 69, in the 8 th m ont h
[August]. They declared the martial law… Sey Uşen was sle eping in the park. He w a s n o t inf or med
about anything. In the par k that is called Inönü Par k

424

now. W hen he woke up he loo ked ar ound
and could not see a ny o ne, e very w here wa s clo sed, restaur a nts, shops…Streets were empty. He did
not have ci garettes. Whe n he sa w cops in from of the p olice statio n, he ap proached them, kicked o ne
of t he cop s and shouted at them i n o ur lan guage [Kır mancki] “What did you do to my p eop le? Did
y o u repeat [19 ]38 ?”. T hey explained the declar ation of martial la w , gave him cigarette. He refused.
They [t he co ps] called t he night watc hman [ gece bek çisi ] who was a friend o f Se y U şen. H e

421

Butler, The Psychic Life of Power , 104.

422

Cem is the cor e Alevi ritual and literally means gatheri ng. It includes mu sic, si ng ing and a particular d ance
called sema h .

423

Pir Sultan Abdal (ca. 1480 – 1550) w as a T urkish Alevi poet whose importance in the histo ry of Alevism
comes from his par ticipation i n rebellions a gainst the Otto man establishme nt.

424

Ismet Inönü (188 4 – 1973 ) w as a T urkis h general and s tatesman. He served as the second P resident of Turke y
(1938 – 50) and took an active par t in the Dersim Genocide.

explained him that everyone was ok. He [the night watchman] took Sey Uşen to eat somethi ng. Sey
Uşen, the one considered mad, raided the police station and ask ed if they did again the same as the y
had done in [19 ]38. Because he has go ne through [19] 38.

425

While Mahmut Dede associate d this incident w ith a ban on cem gatherings in 1969, Ali
remember ed Şe y wuşen’s encounter with the police officers as havin g occurred in the 1990s:
They declar ed martial la w, no one could go o ut. The experien ce of the [1 9]90… is very he avy here
[in Dersi m ]. Sey Uşe n wakes up o ne day a nd he ca nnot s ee anyone around. He gets a fraid. He sees
the cops on the street s and go shout at them “What did you do to my peop le? Did y o u kill everyone
again, did y o u do [19] 38 again?” The co ps try to explain, he did not listen.

426

Hüse y in A ygün, a CHP deputy from Dersim, wrote online about the same story with reference
to the 1980 coup d’état:
He [Şeywyşen] was a fraid of t he da ys of cens us. He gets sus pected that the y again killed ever y one
[ insanları yin e kırdılar ] . After the co up o f 19 80, in o ne o f those d ays of c urf ew he w en t to t he po lice
station a nd as ked “ Where did you take my p eople to kill ? ” [ ero sıma na mılet berd koti qırr
kerd ? ].

427

Several of m y int erlocutors associated this event with the 1980 coup d’ ét at. Aygün wrote the
text above in a popular i ndependent online news platform in 2007 , whi ch mi g ht be one r eason
why this account w as circulated mor e than others. It is important to note th at in the inte rviews
I conducted, m y interlocutors referred clearl y to 1938 and us ed fi gura ti ve language su ch as
kırmak , meanin g causin g extinction . For instan ce Hıdır (50s), who us ed to be in a Maoist
organization and was now working at a university, said:
He [Şeywuşen] reme m ber ed the [19]38 during the cur few aft er th e coup of [19]8 0. He s houts at the
cops “Killers did you kill everyone one again?” Peo ple th ink that those words could not belo ng to a
mad person. A time w he n n o one could go out and op en their mouth a mad p erson w as far
progressive tha n a sane one. W hen everyone w as sile nced the m ad man starts spea king.

428

While such accounts illust rate that different temporal patterns of associations are in pla y, some
events and situations make temporal re ferenc es i ntercha ngeable. Core elements of the stories
remain the same. For instance, Şe ywuşe n’s asso ciation of the curfew with the experience of
1938, and his encounter with the security forces, are repeating elements. While these elements
remain the same, there is a tendency to locate the m in the period that see ms more vulnerable,
important or significant to the narrator. W hile Ma hmut Dede , a religious f igure , narrated the
story of Şe y wuşen’s encounter with police office rs in reference to the ba n on cem rituals in
1969, Hüseyin A y gün , who was engaged in leftist mobi lization in the 1970s and continued his

425

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Mah mut Dede in Ber lin, December 201 5.

426

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Ali in Der sim, J un e 201 6.

427

https://m.bianet.or g/bianet/toplum/101843 -hacettepe-den -insanin-deli-ded igi-projesi

428

Excerpt fro m the interview I co nducted with Hıdır in Ista nbul, June 2015.

political career in the C HP (Republican People’s Part y , Kemalist social democratic part y ) retold
the story in relation to the 1980 coup d’état.
The changing temporal placement of the ev ent is illustrative in three way s . Firstl y , it
shows that stories of Şeywuşen provide a basis to voice the silenced experience of state violence
that is woven into the landsca pe of Dersim. The story is shaped around an event of state-
sponsored violence whic h the interlocutor priorit izes. In this wa y , the st ory of the madman
becomes a reflection of the ti me period it is locat ed in. Those who identify themselves with
leftist movements put forward the 1980 coup d ’état ; those who identif y wit h the Kurdish
movement locate stories of madmen in the 19 90s. Since Şe y wuşen was in t he cit y center from
the late 1960s until the m id-1990s, his biography allows eve nts to be plac ed so as to emphasize
either the victimhood of those identif y in g as Al evis, affiliated with leftist movements , or
affiliated with the Kurdish movement.
Secondly , the replicability of the temporal refere nces is onl y possible through a shared
sense of continuous state violence. The ac counts quoted above indi ca te that the history of
Dersim can onl y be written against the well- established underst anding o f the “ gradua l
elimination or containment of violence throu gh the state's monopolization of the regular ization
and organization of civil society .”

429

What li nks the afterma th of the 1980 coup and the 1990 s
is the experience of ma ssive arrests, assassinations and curfews. In other words, the f ree
association of temporality is a practice that requires building upon the share d sense of the
continual experience of s tate viol enc e. What does it say about the historicization of particular
incidents of state violence if the reference to dates becomes a matter of t elling the stories th e
interlocutor prioritiz es ?
In an article published in Dersim (see Chapter III ), Kemal Mutlu, the chairman of the
İ zmir branch of the Tunceli Cultural and Solidar ity Association describes the state of
emerge nc y as the rule in Dersim:
The ordinary… T his is a way o f being that Der simis have been alienated fro m and almost forgot.
After [19]3 8, w hich is regarded as a m ile stone in Dersimi s’ unconscio us, Dersimis were no t able to
live th e or dinary in a tr ue sense. The process th at is called the ordinary w a s in terrupted for 24 y ea rs,
first w ith the m artial law d eclared in 1978 , and afterw ards with the military r egime a fter 19 80 [co up
d’état] and the state of emergency.

430

Although politi cal violence appears as “the bru te ph y sic al force that ruptures the flow of
everyday li fe”

431

the contin uity of state violence in thi s reg ion illuminates th e links between

429

Coronil and Skur ski, States of Violence , 2.

430

Mutlu, Ke m a l. 200 2. “Dersim ve Olağan Hal”, De rsim , İzmir: E tki Matbaacılık.

431

Coronil and S ku rski, States of Violence , 1.

“violent rupture and the routine maintenance of order. ”

432

I n a place wher e “rupture” is so
consistent, the “ordinary” loses its place and the difference betw een th e fact and the law
diffuses. Unhinging the dichotomy b etwee n violent rupture and the ordinary, the ex perience o f
violence becomes indeed constituti ve for the ordinary.

433

I n that sense, looking at Dersim, on
the margins of the Ottoman Empire and Turk ey, gives a privile ge d perspective from which to
understand the state, “not beca use it c aptures exotic practices, but beca use it suggests that such
marg ins are a ne ce ssar y e ntailment of the state, mu ch as the ex ception is a n ecessary component
of the rule.”

434

The role that the continu ity of state viol enc e pla ys in th ese stories su ggests a different
reading of the notion of tra uma which goes both beyond the ps y cholo gical framing “(the traces
left in the ps y che) and the popular usage (an open wound in the collective memory ) . ”

435

Turning
to Walter Benjamin’s understanding of the historical reading of the past i s illuminating. For
Be njamin, “to articulate the past historically does n ot mean to recognize it ‘the wa y that it reall y
was [referring to Ranke]. ’ It me ans to s eize hold of a m emory as it flashes up at a moment o f
danger.”

436

In the stories above, Şey wuşen encounters the securit y forces and rec alls another
moment of danger. In other words, what is at th e core of the repeated plot is that Ş ey wuş en
brings into the pr esent another moment, a similar experience, that happened in the past. Putting
two “wounded memories”

437

into contact, Şe y wuşen appears to suggest a creative engagemen t
with loss ; “an open r elationship with the past — bringing its ghosts and spe cters, its flaring and
fleeting images, int o the present.”

438

For Benjamin, t his kind of r elational engagement with loss
is the key for altering historicism, which in his view produces only empathetic narra tives with
the victor.

439

Following Benjamin, Fassin and Rechtman defin e trauma “as the sudd en
emerge nce of memor y at the moment of danger. ”

440

This formulation of trauma , which pla ces
the open wound in relation to former losses , challenges the bounded temporalit y : a beginning
and an end of an event indicating a rupture of every d a y lif e, which is inherent to the notion of

432

Coronil and S ku rski, States of Violence , 2.

433

Agamben, Ho mo sacer .

434

Veena Das, Debo rah Poole, “ States and its Mar gins: Comparative Eth nographies,“ in Ant hropolog y in the
Margins of th e State (Veena Das and Debor ah Poole, eds. Santa Fe: Sc hool of American Research Pr ess 2004).

435

Didier Fassi n & Ric hard Rechtman, Th e empire of trau ma: an inquiry into the cond ition of victimhood
(Princeton, N.J . : Princeton University Press, 200 9).

436

Walter B enjamin , "On the: C oncept of Histor y“ , in Selecte d Writings (Ca m brid ge: MA and London : Belknap
Press, 19 96).

437

Fassin & Rec htman, The emp ire of trauma : an inquiry in to the condition of v ictimhood , 28.

438

Marc Nichanian, “Catastrophic Mo urning,” in Loss: The Pol itics of Mourning , ed s. David L. Eng, and Da vid
Kazanjian (Ber keley: Universit y of California Pr ess, 2003), 99 – 124.

439

Walter B enjamin , "On the: C oncept of Histor y“ , in Selecte d Writings (Ca m brid ge: MA and London : Belknap
Press, 19 96).

440

Fassin & Rec htman, The emp ire of trauma : an inquiry into the condition of v ictimhood , 28.

trauma. The tend ency t o perceive loss in re lation to other ex perie nces resists the closed
narra tives o f trauma. The attempt to relate to the p ast in the present through loss, wound s and
the ex perienc e of absence are the grounds on which a produ ctive engagement with what is
irreversibly destroyed is made possible. Th is possibi lity will be elaborated in the next chapters
where I will discuss th e tr anslations of madness into divi nity and monumental commemoration.
Thirdly, p roviding a basis to transcend the bounded tempo ralit y o f the events and
therefore the inj ury attached to them, the figure of madma n offers a basis for a diffe rent kind of
connectedness: one that goes bey ond the experience of violence, the wound that binds different
communities within Dersim. The emerg en ce of the madman as a public figure, one who
ge nerates affective attachments that sugg est a connection be y ond the existing groups , can be
explained through the way that the identit y of the madman is produced. As Jacques Derrida
famously ar gue d, identities are constructed through a violentl y hierarchical difference which
means that without the constitutive other, the identit y cannot be formed.

441

In this frame,
identities “can function as points of identification and attachment onl y because of their capacit y
to ex clude, to leave out, to render ‘outside’, abjected. ”

442

In that sens e, ever y identit y h as a
“constructed form of closure” w hich forms its “ma rg in . ”

443

How ever, although the term identit y
seems to suggest a “fantas y of inc orporation , ” it is a process of “articulation, a suturing, an
over-de termination not a subsumpti on. ” Grounded in “fantasy, in projection and in idealization”
it constantly de stabilizes what is in and what is out.

444

If the notion of identity is in itself shaky in terms of wha t is excluded and included, how
to approach the l abel of mad? I ar g ue that the kind of connectivity th at Şey wuş en genera tes is
only possible in the absence of a s elf-performed injur y . I n other words, onl y in the absence of
personal attachment to a specific historical moment could Şeywuşen h ave become the embodied
affliction of the otherness that has b een attributed t o the r egion. By becoming a fi gure who can
perform the injuries of Dersim he genera tes a kind of connectivity that opens up a relativel y
free ground on which to share silenced stories of violence, pain and suff ering in a wa y that is
incommensurable, unlik e alternative political n arr atives which are inst rumentalized in the
service of concrete politica l demands.

441

Jacq ues Derrida, P ositions (Chicago: Universit y of Chicago Press 1981).

442

Stuart Hall. “Who Need s Identity” in The Id entity Read er . Eds. Paul Du Gay, Jessica E vans& Peter Red m an,
(Sage, 200 0), 5.

443

Hall “Who Needs Identi ty”, 5.

444

Hall “Who Needs Identi ty”, 3.

Conclusion
Mad m en are my b est friends in Dersim ( laughing). I sw ear. Before anything else I go to visit Rad yo
Xıdır, Chelsea Celal at the ce nter and Mustafa Kemal i n O vacık be fore I go my villa ge. … Ever y
time I go to Dersim center I for sure light a candle for the s oul of Sey Uşen in front of his statue. …
My g rand m ot her w a s telling me w hen I was a kid that they are evliya s (laughing). I love o ur evliya s
so much, (laughing) much more than all the o ther evliya s of the world.

445

These are the words of I l han who was born in 1969 in south Germany to a gastarbeiter famil y
which immigrated from Ovacık, De rsim. Dur ing his childhood and in his a dult life he tra velled
freque ntl y to Dersim and be came invol ved in local politics with the Kurdish movement both in
Germany and in Turke y . In addition to being a w ell -known face of the anti -fa scist movement
in German y in the 1990s , during his graduate edu cation he became a publi c figure in German
and Turkish political and artistic circles. Ze ki, who was born in 1968 and came to German y
after le aving prison whe n he was 18, also described how madme n occ up y a special place in his
travels to Dersim. Afte r settling in south Germany he kept in “close contact with his
hometown: ”
A co nsiderable par t o f my luggag e is still full of clo thes that I bring to our m ad men. Although I
know t hat t hey w ill be d eformed , rip ped, to rn in two hours I keep doing it f or y ears. … I spend most
of my ti me in Dersi m with them, I especiall y love traveling with the m, they make me a j oy ful perso n.
… It is very sad eac h time I p ass by Sey Uşe n’s statue… I a m ver y proud that we have his statue at
the center, but it also reminds… I d on’t know, I guess I miss ha nging out with hi m .

446

Ze ki and Ilhan a re not alone in referr ing to the madmen as an entrance point to Dersim or a
significa nt reference poin t of their ti me there. Even before I asked about the madmen of Dersim,
stories and memo ries of madmen were m entioned by several interlocutors in German y . Those
stories often contain ed str ong emotional references , such as Zeki’s words which express the joy
associated with the ti me h e spent with the madmen. At times when emotions were not expressed
with clea r emotional wording the lau ghter that a ccompanied the narrations became a gesture to
decipher their affective charge. As with most of m y inte rviews, m y me eting with I lhan w as
accompanied b y laughter which was char ge d with diverse affects in different sentences. For
instance, Ilhan’s laughter as he said “Madmen are my best frie nds in Dersim (laughing). I swear
[ vallahi bak ]” can be tak en as an intensified expression of the absurdity of one’s b est friends
being madmen in a pla ce which is supposed to be “home” for the diasporic s ubject. The laughter
revea ls a contrast: for most people with a gastarbeiter background going “home” means visiti ng
family memb ers, but for I lhan visiti ng the madmen was at the top of his list before he went to
his ancestral villa g e. Other moments of laughter in the quote above h ave quite different

445

Excerpt fro m the interview I c onducted with Ilha n in Berlin, September 201 7.

446

Excerpt fro m the inter view I conducted with Zeki i n Rüsselsheim, December 2016 .

affective c apacities. While mentioning that his grandmother attribut ed spiritual power to
madmen Ilhan start ed laughing: “My grandmother was telling me when I was a kid that the y
are e vliya s (laughing). ” This time, laughter e xpresses a stanc e towards such spiritual attributes,
belittling them b y associating “s y mpt omatic behavior” with feud al (and th erefore backward)
economic relations. However, his laughter in the following sentence connotes an atheistic
preference of ha ving an emotional attachment to that sort of saint ove r inst itutionalized ,
mainstream religious fi gures such as prophets or saints: “ I love our own evliya s so much,
(laug hing) much more than all the other evliya s of the world.”
Among man y texts publi shed durin g th e 1960s an d 1970s on the und erde velopment of
Dersim, one article, publi shed in 1968, attracts attenti on with its tone of embracing rather than
criticizing it or prescribing a path towards pro g ress . I n Tunceli’de Z ekâ Grubu (Tunceli’s
Intellige nce G roup), Ni yazi Okaygün argues that the level of int elligence i s higher in Tunceli
than in other pla ces and provides an anecdote to prove his point. Whil e passing Elazığ on his
way to De rsim, he encou ntered Deli Alo from Sor piy an, a former Armenian village. Deli Alo
and Deli Hıdo had a n agr eement on how to divide the c ity: the upper side of the route f rom the
concre te bridge in the center to the bridge of Pertek would belong to Alo and the lower side to
Hıdo. But since the baker y was on Hıdo’s side, Alo could not find anything to eat and was
starving. Thus Alo wante d to change the bord ers of their divided world. Whe n Hıdo heard about
this he had a smart idea t o save his territor y . He went to stand b y th e militar y troops near th e
Pertek Bridge and told Alo that if he ever wanted a war , his army was rea dy . The stor y ends
with Hıdo getting afraid and Alo winning the b attle even befo re it b egan. Oka y gün ’s stor y
illustrates that in Dersim even the one considered mad has a chance to develop his intelligence
thanks to the influence of his surroundings: of bei ng surrounded b y geniuses.

447

The stor y of
Hıdo and Alo, which could ea sil y fit a narra tive of underdevelopment, is here used to illustrate
how grea t Dersim is. This is confirmed in the last se ntence of the a rticle: “Some wish that God
crea ted them in Europe or in the USA. B ut I s a y that God thankfull y created me in Tunceli. ”

448

The quotes f rom I lhan and Zeki, along with Oka y gün’s article , illustrate th at the figure
of the madman is a sign embracin g Dersim, a pla ce where it is hard to survive due to political
violence and poor e conomic conditions. I argue that such fi g ures provide a zone of
connectedness where the loss attached to ca ses of s tate violenc e acting as significant re ferences

447

Okaygün, Niyazi. Tunceli’de Zekâ Grubu , Dersim: Tunceli Kü ltür Derneği Yayın Organı , Ankara, 1968 .

448

Okaygün, Niyazi. Tunceli’de Zekâ Grub u , , 13.

100

in identity formation can be t ransc ended. It is a ki nd of connectedness that offers a productive
engagement with loss

449

by bringing the loss to the present.
To make a genealogy of the specific kind of conne ctivity generated b y th e figure of
Şeywuşen, in thi s chapter I first depicted th e narratives about his madness and then analy z ed
the g lue keeping different accounts to ge ther: t he failure to become a “man” due to an
unsuccessful engagement with state violence and/or his inabilit y to fulfil t he role of the male
figure in the family. In other words, Şe y wuşen ’s “madne ss” is narrated in relation to differe nt
“injuries” marked b y the gendered construction of identit y in Turkey. Elaborating on the role
of state violence in the f ormation of new identities I depict ed how the otherness attached to
Dersim was inflicted in hi s stor y throu g h various attributions of the ex perience of state viol ence.
Looking at popularl y n arrated stories about Ş eywuşe n , I traced various translations of his
madness: the abilit y to op en a sp ace to voic e silenc ed experie nces of state violence in th e r egion;
the possibility to re late the present throu gh the loss of the past ; the connectivit y that transcends
differe nt bound ed communities of loss. Focusing on the period when Şe y wuşen started to be
perce ived as a hol y- mad, a budela , I will now elab orate on the hol y capacities attributed to him.

449

Eng and Kazanj ian, Loss .

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