Tunceli Province

**Tunceli Province** (, , Zazaki: ; ) is a province in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. It was named **Dersim Province** before being named Tunceli Province. It is the least densely-populated province in Turkey. It has a population of 83,645 people. Tunceli Province has 8 districts: Çemişgezek, Hozat, Mazgirt, Nazımiye, Ovacık, Pertek, Pülümür, and Tunceli (the capital district).

Before the Armenian genocide, Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharput) vilayet (province), was one of the six vilayets which was a part of historical Turkish Armenia. Tunceli Province was part of Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharput) vilayet. It has a Zaza Alevi majority.

The districts of Mazgirt, Nazımiye and Çemişgezek had a large Armenian population during the Ottoman period. A large part of this population must have been deported out of Anatolia with the deportation order of 1915. It is likely that the remaining population migrated to Western Anatolia. The province is mostly populated by Zazas.

## History

The history of the province stretches back to antiquity. It was mentioned as Daranalis by Ptolemy, and seemingly, it was referred to as Daranis before him. One theory as to the origin of the name associates with Darius the Great. Another, more likely hypothesis, considering the region's Armenian background, says the name Daranalis or Daranaghis comes from the historical Armenian province of Daron, of which Dersim belonged.

The area that would become Dersim province formed part of Urartu, Media, the Achaemenid Empire, and the Ancient kingdom of Armenia. Later ruled by the Roman and Parthian Empires and by their successors, the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. Seljuq Turks invaded in the 11th.

As of the end of the 19th century, the region, called Dersim, was included in the Ottoman sancak (sub-province) of Hozat, including the city and the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet (now Elazığ), with the exception of the actual district of Pülümür, which was in the neighboring sancak of Erzincan, then a part of the Erzurum Vilayet. This status continued through the first years of the Republic of Turkey, until 1936 when the name of the province ("Dersim") was changed to Tunceli, literally 'the land of bronze' in Turkish (_tunç_ meaning 'bronze' and _el_ (in this context) meaning 'land') after the brutal events of the Dersim rebellion. The town of Kalan was made the capital and the district of Pülümür was included in the new province.

In 1937, an Alevi Kurdish revolt broke out in the region and was suppressed with the deaths of 30,000 Kurds.

Following the Tunceli Law 1935, which demanded a more powerful government in the region, the Fourth Inspectorate-General (_Umumi Müfettişlik,_ UM) was created in January 1936. The fourth UM span over the provinces of Elaziğ, Erzincan, Bingöl and Tunceli, and was governed by a Governor Commander. Most of the employees in the municipality were to be filled with military personnel and the Governor-Commander had the authority to evacuate whole villages and resettle them in other parts. Also the juridical guarantees did not comply with the law in the other parts in Turkey. The trials were at most 15 days long and sentences could not be appealed. For a release, the Governor Commander had to give his consent. The application of the death penalty was under the authority of the Governor-Commander, while normally it would be the authority of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to approve such a punishment. In 1946 the Tunceli Law was abolished and the state of emergency removed but the authority of the fourth UM was transferred to the military. The Inspectorates-General was dissolved in 1952 during the Government of the Democrat Party.

### Languages

Tunceli's language distribution is 69.5% Zaza, 29.8% Turkish and 0.74% Kurdish in 1927. Zaza is spoken in Hozat, Pülümür, Ovacık and Nazımiye. Both Kurdish and Zaza is spoken in Tunceli town and Mazgirt.

### Armenians in Dersim

According to Mihran Prgiç Gültekin, the head of the Union of Dersim Armenians, around 5% of the population in villages of Dersim are "converted Armenians." The greater part of hidden Armenians of Dersim, according Gultekin, is afraid that the nationalist regime may be back and may repress them. Currently over 200 families have announce their Armenian descent in Dersim, Gultekin said. In April 2013, Aram Ateşyan, the acting Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, stated maybe that 5% of Tunceli (Dersim)'s population is of Armenian origin. In 2015, a group of citizens in Dersim (Tunceli) established the Dersim Armenians and Alevis Friendship Association (DERADOST). The opening ceremony of the association was attended by Hüseyin Tunç, then Deputy Mayor of Tunceli, Yusuf Cengiz, President of Tunceli Chamber of Commerce and Industry, representatives of non-governmental organisations and some citizens. On the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, president of the association Serkan Sariataş said that the state should face its past history as soon as possible. Through the 20th century, many Armenians lived in the mountainous region of Dersim. During the Armenian genocide, many of the Armenians in the region were saved by their Kurdish neighbors.

### Population

Population by year (1914: Ottoman Empire; 1940–today: Turkey)
|Census year|Population|
| --- | --- |
|1914|**80,075**|
|1940|**94,639**|
|1945|**90,446**|
|1950|**105,759**|
|1955|**121,743**|
|1960|**140,068**|
|1965|**154,175**|
|1970|**157,293**|
|1975|**164,591**|
|1980|**157,974**|
|1985|**151,906**|
|1990|**133,143**|
|2000|**93,584**|
|2007|**84,022**|
|2008|**86,449**|
|2009|**83,061**|
|2010|**76,699**|
|2011|**85,062**|
|2012|**86,276**|
|2013|**85,428**|
|2014|**86,527**|
|2015|**86,076**|
|2016|**82,193**|
|2017|**82,498**|
|2018|**88,198**|
|2019|**84,660**|
|2020|**83,443**|
|2021|**83,645**|

## Politics

Maçoğlu, who entered the election as the candidate of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), was elected mayor of Tunceli (Dersim) with 32 per cent of the votes. Thus, for the first time in the history of Turkey, communists began to govern the municipality of a province.

## Name changes

According to Nuri Dersimi, it is noteworthy that six centuries before Christ, Greek historians and geographers called the Dersim region Daranis, and in the Bisltun inscriptions of Dara, this region is called Zuza, and the term Zuza is similar to the word Zaza, which is the "Kurdish dialect" spoken in Dersim and its region. According to another thesis, estimated that the name Dersim (Der-sîm "silver gate" in Persian) was given to the region, which frequently changed hands between the Sassanids and Byzantium during the Byzantine period. After and before the Dersim rebellion, any villages and towns deemed to have non-Turkish names were renamed and given Turkish names in order to suppress any non-Turkish heritage. During the Turkish Republican era, the words Kurdistan and Kurds were banned. The Turkish government had disguised the presence of the Kurds statistically by categorizing them as "Mountain Turks".

The people of Tunceli have been actively fighting to get their province reverted to its old Kurdish name "Dersim". Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) claimed they are working on what it called a “democratization package” that includes the restoration of the Kurdish name of the eastern province of Tunceli back to Dersim in early 2013, but there has been no updates or news of it since then. The local authority decided to call it Dersim in May 2019, while the Governor said it was against the law to call it Dersim.

## Notable people

- John I Tzimiskes (925–976) - Byzantine emperor between 969 and 976 years
- Seyid Riza (1863–1937) - Kurdish tribal leader and organizator of Dersim rebellion
- Nuri Dersimi (1893–1973) - Kurdish nationalist writer, revolutionary and intellectual
- Aurora Mardiganian (1901–1994) - Armenian author, actress, and a survivor of the Armenian genocide
- Turgut Özal (1927–1993) - 8th president of Turkey, he was of mixed Turkish and Kurdish descent
- Sait Kırmızıtoprak (1935–1971) - Kurdish nationalist writer and revolutionary
- Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (1948) - Turkish economist, retired civil servant, social democratic politician and leader of the Republican People's Party
- Gültan Kışanak (1961) - Kurdish journalist, author and politician
- Alican Önlü (1967) - Kurdish politician
- Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius (1977) - Dutch politician of Zaza origin, current minister of justice and security in Netherlands
- Sakine Cansız (1958–2013) - Kurdish activist, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
- Volga Sorgu (1981) - Zaza movie and serial actor
- Zuhal Demir (1980) - Belgian lawyer and politician of Kurdish origin, current minister of environment, justice, tourism and energy in Flanders, Belgium
- Edibe Şahin (1960) - Kurdish politician, former mayor of the municipality of Tunceli.
- Kamer Genç (1940–2016) - Turkish politician
- Hülya Oran (1978) - Kurdish miliant, one of leaders of Kurdistan Workers' Party and is the co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union
- Hozan Diyar (1966) - Kurdish singer
- Yıldız Tilbe (1966) - singer of Kurdish origin
- Hüseyin Aygün (1970) - Zaza lawyer and politician
- Ali Haydar Kaytan (1952–2019) - Kurdish miliant, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
- Aynur Doğan (1975) - Zaza singer and songwriter
- Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu (1968) -  communist politician, currently the mayor of Tunceli with Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) ticket
- Ferhat Tunç (1964) - Kurdish singer, songwriter and musician
- Mikail Aslan (1972) - Zaza musician

## Infobox (settlement)

- **name**: Tunceli Province
- **native name lang**: tr
- **settlement type**: Provinces of Turkey, Province of Turkey
- **image skyline**: Dêrsim.jpg
- **image map**: Dersim_in_Turkey.svg
- **mapsize**: 300px
- **map caption**: Location of Tunceli Province in Turkey
- **subdivision type**: Country
- **subdivision name**: Turkey
- **subdivision type1**: First-level NUTS of Turkey, Region
- **subdivision name1**: Central East Anatolia Region (statistical), Central East Anatolia
- **subdivision type2**: Second-level NUTS of Turkey, Subregion
- **subdivision name2**: Malatya Subregion, Malatya
- **subdivision type3**: Largest City
- **subdivision name3**: Tunceli
- **seat type**: Provincial seat and largest city
- **seat1 type**: Largest city
- **leader title**: Electoral districts of Turkey, Electoral district
- **leader name**: Tunceli (electoral district), Tunceli
- **leader title1**: Governor
- **leader name1**: Mehmet Ali Özkan
- **total type**: Total
- **area total km2**: 7,774
- **population as of**: 2018
- **population density km2**: auto
- **area code**: 0428
- **registration plate**: 62
- **established title**: Foundation
- **established date**: 25 December 1935