Deadly 1978 Maras Attack Still Fresh in Minds of Survivors

ANKARA, Turkey - This week is the second anniversary of a Turkish airstrike that killed 34 Kurdish villagers near the border with the Kurdistan Region. But in the minds of those old enough to remember, another massacre that happened the same week more than three decades ago is still fresh.

In a series of attacks in 1978 in Maras that lasted a week, 111 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

The victims were Alevi Kurds, who writer Aziz Tunc believes were killed for refusing to assimilate into the Turkish language and culture.

“This massacre was aimed at deepening the assimilation process of Kurds and Alevis who had not assimilated,” Tunc told Rudaw.

Tunc, who has penned a book on the incident titled Maras Massacre – Its Historical Background and Anatomy said that the Alevis were unwilling to let go of the multicultural makeup and freedom that was a feature of their area before the creation of modern day Turkey in 1923.

He said that on the day of the attack members of the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) had incited people to the violence by making it a religious war.

“They shouted slogans like ‘today is the day of Jihad’, ‘if you kill an Alevi you will go to heaven’, ‘today is the last of Alevis’ and ‘there is a Kurdish wedding today’. By ‘Kurdish wedding’, they meant a Kurdish massacre,” Tunc said.

He explained that Kurds were not the only victims of the attack, adding that progressive and leftist Turks who had opposed the official policies of Ankara were also included.

Kemal Bulbul, the head of the Pir Sultan Abdal Alevi Cultural Association, said that the violent attack, which took place only two years before the 1980 military coup, was officially backed by the state.

“At first, they killed an Alevi religious leader and two Alevi teachers to give the message that ‘we can kill even the most important members of your community’,” Bulbul told Rudaw. “Then they made announcements from mosques that ‘communists and Alevis are burning the mosques; you should attack them.’”

“After those announcements, the fascists started a massacre that is too hard to verbalize,” Bulbul recalled. “They burned people to death, cut them to pieces and slaughtered even children, elderly people and pregnant women.”

Worse still, said Bulbul, the massacre scared many people who packed up and left their homes forever and settled elsewhere in Turkey.

Bulbul said that the Alevis are peaceful and believe in coexistence, but that they cannot accept any official religion or identity imposed on them.

“Of course, as Alevis, we do not have any problem with the Turkish identity of the people. The problem is the Turkish identity that is connected to and invented by the state and imposed on people,” he said.

“We do not have a problem with Sunni identity either. The problem is the Muslim identity that is designed by the state through the Diyanet (the state authority for religious affairs) in order to dominate and oppress us.”

According to Bulbul, for the first time in 35 years since the massacre, members of the Alevi community have been allowed to commemorate their tragic event. He also said that they are now building an Alevi house of worship (Cemevi) near the site of the killings.

“The state officials try to prevent us from holding commemoration ceremonies because they want us to forget about the massacre, but to forget this massacre is to betray humanity, history and faith,” Bulbul said.

A member of the Pir Sultan Abdal Association and a witness to the massacre, who wished to remain unnamed, told Rudaw that people still have fear and are traumatized by the massacre.

“I and my family were able to survive because a Sunni neighbor of ours opened her door to us,” the witness and survivor recalled. “We hid in her bathroom for about eight hours.”

“State officials could have sent a few soldiers to the town center if they had wanted to protect us, but they did not do anything. The state is the one to blame for the massacre,” he said.

Tunc said that about 700 were tried for committing the attacks but “all of them were released by 1990.”

Bulbul said that the case should be reopened and those responsible tried again.

“The then chief of police, governor, interior minister and intelligence head etc. should be brought to trial,” he said. “The person who was brought to court as a defendant later became an MP in the Turkish parliament.”

Bulbul said that some form of “cultural massacre” is still pursued against members of the Alevi community in Turkey through intimidation and discrimination.