454 Resisting Publics
42.ntil the mid-1930s, the people of the mountainous region then named U
Dersim had indeed never been completely brought under control by the
central government and had a long history of rebelling whenever tribal
autonomy was at stake. In 1937–1938, large military operations were
launched to put an end to what was then perceived as the “ultimate resis-
tance of pre-modernity.” See Mesut Yeğen, “The Kurdish Question in
Turkish State Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 4 (1999):
553.
On the Dersim uprisings and suppression and its place in the produc-
tion of local history, see Martin Van Bruinessen, “Genocide in Kurdistan?
The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the
Chemical War against the Iraqi Kurds (1988),” in Genocide: Conceptual
and Historical Dimensions, edited by G. J. Andréopoulos (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); and Nicole Watts, “Relocating
Dersim: Turkish State-building and Kurdish Resistance, 1931–1938,” New
Perspectives on Turkey 23 (Fall 2000): 5–30.
43.n the past, Alevis used to worship outside or within a house chosen for that I
occasion. Men and women (unveiled) take part in the ceremony together.
Important changes affected this system of belief and its rituals, notably due
to the experience of migration from the 1950s on, urban life, and intoler-
ance and repression. The first cem evleri appeared at the beginning of the
1990s, in the larger cities of Turkey. See Fuat Bozkurt, “State-Community
Relations in the Restructuring of Alevism,” in Alevi Identity, edited by Tord
Olsson, Elisabeth Özdalga and Catharina Raudvere (Istanbul: Swedish
Research Institute, 1998).
44.ighting candles is one of the practices considered superstitious in the L
orthodoxy, as defined by the State Department of Religious Affairs. The line
between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is however much more blurred than
that. Some Sunni believers do light candles in mausoleums, for example.
See Benoît Fliche, “Les frontières de l’orthodoxie et de l’hétérodoxie: Türbe
et églises à Istanbul,” in Boundaries of Religion, Boundaries in Religion,
edited by Galia Valtchinova (Istanbul: Isis, forthcoming).
- Informal conversation with Rojda, Istanbul, 28 August 2006.
- Relieu and Terzi, “Les politiques ordinaires de la vie urbaine,” 391–392.
47.e valley of Tunceli, Turkey’s first national park (1971), shelters an extreme Th
diversity of animal and plant species, some of which are not found elsewhere.