Trapped Between the Map and Reality...
[ DERSİM 38 ]
Geschrieben von an extraction from Maria T. O'Shea am 05. Mai 2008 13:29:48:
"The political identification of Turkish Alevis with their Kurdish co-religionists has been documented as early as during the Kurdish rebellions against the Turkish Republic in the 1930's in the Dersim and Sivas regions, and has been used as support for the co-opting Zaza-speaking Alevis as Kurds.
Seyfi Cengiz, leader of the Dersim CM, who decries both the Turkish and Kurdish nationalist refusal to deny the Alevis and the Zazas a distinct national identity, disputes the Kurdish nature of these rebellions, claiming them as Alevi inspired and led.
Additionaly, he also claims that the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion was a Zaza revolt, and that all other 'Kurdish' uprisings in Turkey have been Alevi revolts, revised by Kurdish nationalists.
Cengiz's views on Kurdish attempts to co-opt Alevis as Kurds, are informed by his anti-nationalst, socialist beliefs, and are maybe both extreme and not shared by the majority of Alevis and Zaza-speakers.
Nevertheless, the reaction of the mainstream Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey to his writing indicates that he raises many uncomfortable questions for Kurdish nationalists about their own chauvinism and possible revisions of history.
The views of linguists on the separateness of the Zaza language and its dialects may be utilized by Turkish nationalists to deny them Kurdish identity, but Cengiz argues that Kurdish nationalists attack compelling evidence to deny Dimlis their own identity in a way that is damaging to Kurdish as well as Dimli culture..."
(Maria T. O'Shea, Trapped Between the Map and Reality: Geography and Perceptions of..., 2004)