Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) member of parliement proposed a parliementary question regarding the Dersim Massacre happened in 1937-1938.

 

In the written parliementary question documents it was stated that 70 thousand people in Dersim were killed during the massacre events in 1937-38. The statement includes the following notes: "Dersim people called 37-38 incidents as 'Tertele' ('Massacre'). Tertele means a major destruction and extintion. This major massacre which is remembered as 'Roza ŞAye ('Dark Day') is recorded in the Turkish history as the biggest massacre after Armenien Genocide. And this massacre stands still in the middle of the Turksih history as a shame. Dersim was a town, where the people built self-governance and the societies there maintained their existence without any state-hegemonic power as such. Therefore, they constituted a major threat for the denialist-assimilative state, which constitutes itself on the identities of Turkishness and Sunni Islam. Dersim, which was planned to be destroyed in the times of Ottoman, because they were evaluated apart from the Islamic religious community was also seen as an obstacle against the nationalization during the transformation from Ottoman rule to the Republic."