On Nov 12, Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy chairman of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), unwittingly initiated a controversy in his party. On a popular political talk show on CNNTurk, Tanrikulu spoke about the “Dersim massacre” of 1937-38 and “apologized” for this incident “on behalf of my party.” The next day, various deputies from the CHP slammed Tanrikulu, arguing that there is nothing to apologize for or that there is nothing about Dersim that should bother the CHP. This debate is not just about the past, but also the future of Turkey’s main opposition party, so it deserves a closer look.

Dersim was a province in the Ottoman Empire and then in republican Turkey until 1935, when it was renamed Tunceli. That was also the year when the Turkish republic, under the “single-party regime” of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his CHP, initiated a “resettlement plan” to subdue the rebellious tribes in this mountainous region. The next three years brought growing tension and ultimately armed conflict between government forces and armed rebels.

The government's methods were reportedly brutal, including mass killings of civilians, razing of homes, and use of poisonous gas. The area was also bombed from the air. One of the pilots who joined the mission was Sabiha Gokcen, the adopted daughter of Ataturk, whose name is kept alive today through Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen International Airport. The number of deaths in Dersim has been disputed, with estimates ranging from 7,000 to 40,000.

The tribes of Dersim, who paid heavily for their “rebellion,” were Kurdish in ethnicity and Alevi in religion. In other words, they were a double minority in predominantly Turkish and Sunni Turkey. That is why many of the Dersim survivors perceived their oppression as part of the centuries-long Sunni-Turkish oppression of Alevis and Kurds. Others pointed out, however, that the republican regime that persecuted the people of Dersim was in fact dominated by none other than Ataturk’s all-secular CHP and its long-time ideology, Kemalism.