Le Ray 453
Kurdish name) with “Tunceli” in 1935, to signal that the new Turkish state
had decided to take back the troublesome province.
- See the press article in Tercüman, 12 December 2005.
36.ee Hüseyin Aygün, “Tunceli’de Zarar Tespit Çalışmalarına Dair” [On the S
Evaluation of Damages in Tunceli], Bianet, 17 March 2006, http://www.
bianet.org/bianet/kategori/insanhaklari/76081/tuncelide-zarar-tespit-cal-
ismalarina-dair (in Turkish). The law on “redresses concerning damages
caused during the struggle against terrorism” was voted on 17 July 2004.
37.ee “Köye Dönüşe Konut Desteği” [House-Building to Promote Return to S
Villages],Venge Dersim, 24 July 2005, http://www.vengedersim.com/article_view.
php?id=168 (in Turkish).
38.or a stimulating account of the way the official public grammar shapes col- F
lective action in Istanbul and Ankara around specific monuments and sym-
bols, namely the Turkish flag and pictures of Atatürk, see Etienne Copeaux,
“Le consensus obligatoire,” in Turquie, les mille visages: Politique, religion,
femmes et immigration, edited by Isabelle Rigoni (Paris: Syllepsek, 2000).
In Tunceli, demonstrators are generally reluctant to adopt these symbols,
to the point that it has become an ultimate test of loyalty: inhabitants or
groups appearing in public with the Turkish flag cannot be suspected of
acquaintance with terrorist groups (as are most of the collective actors in
Tunceli).
39.this point, see Marie Le Ray, “Associations de pays et production de On
locality: la ‘campagne Munzur’ contre les barrages,” European Journal of
Turkish Studies 2 (2005), http://www.ejts.org/document370.html.
40.e festival was first forbidden in 1998, for “security reasons.” The 2005 Th
festival was also cancelled by the provincial governor for the same reasons.
Nicole Watts has emphasized the major role played by pro-Kurdish city
councils in displaying (spatial) contentious symbolic politics. See Nicole
Watts, “Pro-Kurdish Mayors in As-If Democracy: Symbolic Politics in
Diyarbakır,” World Congress of Kurdish Studies, Erbil, 6–9 September
2006, http://www.institutkurde.org/en/conferences/kurdish_studiesirbil
2006/?intervenant=Nicole%20F%20WATTS. In Tunceli, symbolic politics
appears more modest than in other Kurdish cities, like Diyarbakır.
41.uring the 2004 festival, for example, there were seminars entitled: D
“Alevism: An Identity under Pressure,” “Local Language and Literature,”
and “The Great Middle-East Project, Democracy and the Kurdish
Question.”
