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: Cemisgezek, Hozat, Mazgirt, Nazimiye, Ovacik, Pertek, Pulumur, 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. Today, Tunceli Province is considered part of Turkish Kurdistan. It has a Kurdish Alevi majority.
The districts of Mazgirt, Nazimiye and Cemisgezek 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 Kurdish and is also 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. Arabs invaded in the 7th century, and Seljuq Turks 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 Elazig), with the exception of the actual district of Pulumur, 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 (tunc 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 Pulumur 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 Mufettislik, UM) was created in January 1936. The fourth UM span over the provinces of Elazig, Erzincan, Bingol 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.
Demographics
Languages
Tunceli's language distribution is 69.5% Kurdish and Zaza, 29.8% Turkish and 0.74% Armenian in 1927. Kurdish is the main language around Pertek, while Zaza is spoken in Hozat, Pulumur, Ovacik and Nazimiye. Both Kurmanji and Zaza is spoken in Tunceli town and Mazgirt.
Armenians in Dersim
According to Mihran Prgic Gultekin, the head of the Union of Dersim Armenians, around 75% 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 Atesyan, the acting Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, stated maybe that 90% 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 Huseyin Tunc, 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 Sariatas said that the state should face its past history as soon as possible. Through the 20th century, an many of Armenians living in the mountainous region of Dersim had converted to Alevism. 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)
Politics
Macoglu, 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-sim "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/Zaza 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 Ozal (1927-1993) - 8th president of Turkey, he was of mixed Turkish and Kurdish descent
Sait Kirmizitoprak (1935-1971) - Kurdish nationalist writer and revolutionary
Kemal Kilicdaroglu (1948) - Turkish economist, retired civil servant, social democratic politician and leader of the Republican People's Party
Gultan Kisanak (1961) - Kurdish journalist, author and politician
Alican Onlu (1967) - Kurdish politician
Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius (1977) - Dutch politician of Kurdish origin, current minister of justice and security in Netherlands
Sakine Cansiz (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 Sahin (1960) - Kurdish politician, former mayor of the municipality of Tunceli.
Kamer Genc (1940-2016) - Turkish politician
Hulya 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
Yildiz Tilbe (1966) - singer of Kurdish and Zaza origin
Huseyin Aygun (1970) - Zaza lawyer and politician
Ali Haydar Kaytan (1952-2019) - Kurdish miliant, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
Aynur Dogan (1975) - Kurdish singer and songwriter
Fatih Mehmet Macoglu (1968) - Kurdish communist politician, currently the mayor of Tunceli with Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) ticket
Ferhat Tunc (1964) - Kurdish singer, songwriter and musician
Mikail Aslan (1972) - Zaza musician
Sources
References
Tunceli Province