ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkey’s Pro-Kurdish Democratic Party (HDP) on Tuesday commemorated the Dersim massacre on its anniversary, noting that a legacy of discrimination remains in the area known to Turks as Tunceli. Tulay Hatimogullari, deputy co-chair for human rights affairs, described the event as "one of the bloodiest massacres in history," in a statement released by the party. “Dersim is still being assimilated to have one language and one religion. It is essential for our social peace to abandon such practices. All ethnic and religious identities of Anatolia and Mesopotamia should be protected as our common values,” she said. In March of 1937, Kurds led by the political figure Seyid Riza in the Kurdish-majority province of Dersim in eastern Turkey rebelled against the Turkish government marking another bloody chapter in Kurdish history. Turkish forces launched a campaign of brutal repression to quell it, including aerial bombings and poisonous gas. Estimates for the massacre's death toll run as high as 45,000. In 2011, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also prime minister at the time being, apologized for the mass killing describing it as "one of the most tragic events in our recent history." However, his apology was viewed as an empty ploy to win the voting favor of Kurds in the southeast of the country at that time. The party says people affected by the massacre demand another official apology for the brutal act, a reveal for where the burial site of Seyid Riza and his executed companions is, and the opening the archives to determine the number of people killed between 1937-38.
