To Hozat and Ergen Armenian Church.

Due to the early start in Tunceli, I was in my room by 9.45am. However, I was out again by 10.15am with my bottle full of water taken from a tap in the spacious bathroom (I filled the bottle on many occasions during the day and was impressed that many places had the facilities for me to do so). What were my destinations for the day, provided everything went to plan? Hozat, from where I wanted to visit the ruined Armenian church in or near the village of Gecimli (in some sources, the church was misleadingly said to be in In, but In was about 3 kilometres from the church. Ergen was another name used to identify where the church was. Ergen was probably the old name for Gecimli), and Cemisgezek, a town with a a few important monuments of considerable age. Cemisgezek was also rumoured to have interesting old houses, but how many had survived to the present day I could not establish from afar.

Because getting to the ruined Armenian church from Hozat would probably involve a time-consuming walk along a road devoid of traffic, I hoped to access Hozat first, but I would allow the destination of the first lift to determine the day’s precise programme. I walked north from the hotel for about 1.5 kilometres to a roundabout where a right turn went to modern Pertek and a left turn went to Hozat and Cemisgezek. At the centre of the roundabout was the widely known sign of peace inside a circle first popularised by the anti-nuclear weapons’ movement, and on the sign was the word “peace” in many languages.

The roundabout, Pertek.

I had been at the roundabout for only five minutes when a minibus came down the gently inclined hill from modern Pertek. I flagged down the minibus and was told it was going to Hozat. Perfection.

At first, the road clung to the shore of the reservoir, but, once we had passed the turning for Sagman, a village I would visit the next day, it almost immediately began to ascend into the rounded hills from where there were extensive views over the reservoir and toward distant mountains. Almost every moment of the rest of the day was spent in glorious upland scenery, sometimes surrounded by mountains and sometimes with the vast reservoir in view. From the scenic point of view, this was to prove perhaps the most rewarding day of the trip. It is true that the scenery in Munzur Vadisi Milli Parki was more spectacular and enchanting, but what I encountered today was more extensive. Moreover, there were times when the scenery assumed an austere, even forbidding, character because trees were sometimes absent from view and rainfall in the region less frequent than further north and east. Suffice it to say that I was in remarkably beautiful upland scenery different in character from that in the milli parki. There were fields, orchards, pasture, wild flowers, large herds of cattle, very large flocks of sheep and goats, many small settlements worthy of examination (some small settlements lay along the roads, but most were some distance from and above them) and lots of very friendly and helpful people. Moreover, later in the day, as the sun began its descent toward the horizon in the west, the visibility assumed a clarity of exceptional quality. What more could anyone ask for?

The road to Hozat split from the one to Cemisgezek at a hamlet between Dorutay and Akdemir, and very soon entered a valley narrower than many in the area. The ascent to Hozat was gradual but consistent, and the mountains of the milli parki lay to the north. The closer we got to our destination, the more the scenery recalled that of the milli parki and the Ovacik area.

We arrived in Hozat, a small town on a gently inclined shelf above the valley along which the road had ascended. With mountains around it no one could fault its attractive surroundings, but Hozat was overwhelmingly modern and almost indistinguishable from a thousand Turkish towns of similar size.

Hozat.

By now I had been befriended by an Alevi couple with a remarkably liberal disposition who had travelled on the minibus since it left Pertek. The couple not only explained that Hozat was overwhelmingly Alevi, but helped me get to the ruined Armenian church. They had to visit some people in a village near the church. We retired to a tea house for glasses of tea and a cup of coffee each, and a three phone calls were made. A few people came for a short chat, then, about half an hour later, we climbed into a minibus driven by a man aged about 25. The Alevi couple stopped the minibus not long after it had set off to buy fruit, vegetables, cheese and bread, supplies for the people they wanted to see in what must have been a village devoid of shops.

Hozat.

We drove about 2 kilometres along the road toward Pertek, then took a left turn. The road crossed the river and meandered along the east wall of the valley. Most unusually, a sign beside the road junction indicated that Ergen Kilisesi lay 9 kilometres away. In 99 out of every 100 cases, minor Armenian ruins in Turkey were not signed for walkers or passing motorists. The only explanation I could give for this exception to the rule was that I was in Dersim where all minority communities had been brought together in a spirit of comradeship by decades of secular and Sunni Turkish oppression.

To Ergen Armenian Church.

The road occasionally ascended to a considerable height and the views were outstanding. After driving about 7 kilometres, we took a left and ascended into a very small settlement on an exposed hillside. The minibus drew to a halt outside an old stone house with a flat roof with rooms arranged on only one storey. We had arrived at the house of the friends the Alevi couple wanted to see. Their male friend, a tall and hyperactive individual aged about 40, lived with his partner aged about 32. The couple were unmarried, which was most unusual in Turkey, even in urban centres such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa which thought of themselves as being very liberal and progressive.

Between Hozat and Ergen Armenian Church.

Although the couple in the house had recently installed some kitchen units and a new fridge and cooker, they lived a very simple life in the hills. But for a TV and a few electrical gadgets, they had little more than a family might have had that depended on agriculture to make a living (although there was an impressive collection of bottles with alcoholic drinks on a cupboard in the hall). Their main source of income seemed to be sheep and goats, many of which were temporarily confined to a rectangular enclosure of dry stone walls covered with a large blue sheet made of artificial material no doubt designed to protect the flock from the sun. But what confirmed I was in the company of a couple living an unconventional lifestyle by Turkish standards was a poster of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya hanging on the dark-coloured plaster wall of one of their rooms. I was in the company of communist sympathisers who had chosen to live their lives far from the madding crowd. This meant that they were far from the prying eyes of the police and other uniformed representatives of the Turkish state. Little things during the hour or so that followed suggested to me that both had strong sympathies for the PKK and that the male half of the couple may have fought on its behalf (the woman may have done so as well, for all I know). After she had prepared a wonderful lunch of mild white cheese, olives in a herb and oil dressing, tomatoes, cucumber, helva, bread, butter and tea (the tomatoes, cucumber and bread had just arrived from Hozat, but the cheese and butter were locally sourced. Both the latter were outstanding), the young woman pecked at her food, rolled her own cigarettes with tobacco grown in the Adiyaman area and discussed things as an equal with everyone else. However, not once did she smile. For the whole time she looked as if the problems of a blatantly unjust world, a world in which the oppression of the people least equipped to care for themselves was almost universal, were always at the forefront of her mind. Wearing shalwar, a grubby top and no headscarf or make-up, her slim frame and diminutive height were apparent to everyone present. Handsome rather than pretty, I nonetheless found it difficult to take my eyes off her. If her hands were not engaged in movement, she would prop first one foot and then the other onto the seat of her chair and exhale smoke by lifting her face to the ceiling, thereby allowing some of her long hair to fall from her shoulders down her back.

Lunch near Ergen Armenian Church.

Suddenly it was time to go. I managed to take a few photos of the couple, although it was obvious that neither he nor she were at ease with me doing so (this confirmed that they were keen to be as inconspicuous as possible. They were radically opposed to religion in any shape or form, so the Sunni Muslim idea that it was wrong to photograph a female did not explain their concern about my desire to immortalise one half of the couple), but the farewells were warm and heartfelt (they had detected that my sympathies lay with the left, but I did not sympathise with communism, which so often replaced one tyrannical regime with another). The young man got ready to drive off in the minibus, so I and the Alevi couple who had befriended me on the journey from Pertek climbed aboard. We drove to the road leading to the Armenian church and, after about 3 kilometres, arrived in the village of Gecimli. The minibus was driven into the large garden attached to a house in the centre of the village and the man who had done the driving explained that the house belonged to his family. I met the man’s mother and father and was told that the church lay only 200 metres further along the road. After I had looked at the ruin, I was to return to the house from where I would be driven back to Hozat. As I walked toward the church through yet another village worthy of further examination, I had to fight back a few tears. Hospitality among the people of Dersim was of a quality I had never encountered before, not even elsewhere in Turkey, where, in my experience, hospitality exceeded that in any other nation state I had visited.

Ergen Armenian Church.

The ruined Armenian church at Gecimli was in very poor condition, but it must have been a remarkable building when complete. The carved stone decoration of the exterior conveyed something of its once-stunning appearance. Sinclair notes that the church had been part of a monastery. Today, only parts of the church remained.

Sinclair reveals that:

The church, which was dedicated to the Holy Virgin, and probably the whole monastery (that of Surp Karapet, or John the Baptist), was founded in 975/6. This was about 40 years after the Byzantine conquest of the Dersim and the Lower Euphrates valley. The monastery came into prominence in the early 15th century, when the Armenian and monastic church revival in Amid (Diyarbakir) and its district seems to have affected this area. It was probably in the 1420s that the church was overhauled: it was certainly refaced on the exterior, and the roof and vaults were probably rebuilt. The monastery was active during the whole of the 16th century. It is not clear when it was abandoned, but it was certainly empty by 1865 and the final abandonment may have taken place in the 18th century. Local tradition suggests some serious robbing of the stone in 1944, possibly in order to build a school – but this point needs clearing up by looking at the school.

Ergen Armenian Church.

The church was basilican in layout. Although almost the whole of the s. wall and most of the w. wall have been lost, and although nothing can now be seen of the piers which supported the arcades, the high, elaborately articulated w. façade and the longer n. façade retain their nobility and impact…

Ergen Armenian Church.

There is an apsed chamber, n. of the apse, at the e. end of the northerly aisle. The chamber’s entrance is rather darkened and partly hidden, as if at the end of a corridor, by a short wall extending westward from the end of the apse wall. The wall consists of a short blind arch and the pier from which the first arch is sprung.

Ergen Armenian Church.

The fine decorated portal in the n. wall is placed in the centre of the wall as a whole but e. of the middle point of the wall as seen from inside. The portal is brought forward on two buttresses either side of the doorway; to either side again are two buttresses. Otherwise the n. wall is plain. High in the faces of the two inner buttresses, above the level of the lintel, are panels consisting of a rectangle covered with interlace adjoining a rectangle of contiguous arches joined to one another by knots. Above the door is a heavily decorated lintel, now broken, and a semi-circular relieving arch. Plain engaged pillars run up either side of the doorway and flare outwards in the long, heavily overhanging leaves of the capitals beneath the lintel. Along the outer border of the relieving arch, across the top edge of the lintel’s face and down the lintel’s two ends runs an undulating branch with leaves of an odd, simplified, less supple form than are found in standard Selcuk decoration… At either end (of the lintel) we can see a panel decorated with a plant whose stem divides, is reunited and curves to fill the whole rectangle with its tendrils. At the l.-h. end of the lintel much of the next panel can be seen; the remainder is damaged…

Ergen Armenian Church.

Ergen Armenian Church.

E. façade. Here the triangle of masonry between the apse and the two side-chambers is partly carved out in two wide V-shaped niches. The apse was lighted by a double window whose sills were at head height: however, the windows’ frames have been lost, apart from the outer vertical member of the r.-h. window. Here we can see a line of rosettes and other designs inside circles joined by knots… The composition centring on the window in the apse of the northerly chamber is reasonably complete. The window is flanked by tall panels. Engaged pillars rise between the panels and the window, and provide the support for the arches covering each of the three. Each pillar rises out of a sculptured element resembling a stepped base, which is probably modelled on a stele base. These bases bear very shallow decoration. One of the bases for the two engaged pillars which rose between the apse’s windows is left. Here five arches are deeply carved in the face of the base.

Ergen Armenian Church.

I have quoted extensively from Sinclair because, although not everything he saw in the 1980s has survived, the church is still such a notable monument that people should know what has already been lost, and what could be lost in the future if the ruin is neglected for much longer.

Ergen Armenian Church.

Ergen Armenian Church.

I returned to the house where the minibus had been parked and, after brief chats with everyone present, said goodbye with particular regret to the couple who had befriended me on the minibus from Pertek to Hozat. The young man ushered me into the front of the minibus, picked up a friend who wanted a lift to Hozat, and, after exchanging the V-sign with a few males gathered around an electricity pylon, we left for the main Hozat to Pertek road. The scenery along the dirt and gravel road all the way to the junction looked even more enchanting (especially because we were looking north toward the mountains around Ovacik), not least because I had attained the day’s first goal and it was only just after 1.00pm. I decided to risk a visit to Cemisgezek, although I would probably have to rely on hitched lifts both ways.

Gecimli.

We arrived at the main road and I thanked the driver for everything he had done on my behalf. I offered to pay for at least some of the petrol he had used, but the money was waved away with an expression of mock anger. Not for the first time during the trip, a tear or two began to form.

I began walking south and was soon ascending to a rounded summit with pasture and wild flowers from where I could see many kilometres in all directions. With the views changing very slowly, I could appreciate the landscape even more than in a car or a minibus, not least because nothing created an obstruction between me and my surroundings. I was in a stunningly beautiful part of eastern Turkey and thought longingly about how magical the road between Hozat and Ovacik must be. Another year, with luck.

Between Hozat and the Pertek to Cemisgezek road.

After walking about 3 kilometres, two off-duty jandarma kindly gave me a lift to where the road from Hozat joined the one from Pertek to Cemisgezek. Before arriving at the junction, we stopped at a roadside cesme to fill our bottles with chilled water from a pure source in the nearby hills.

Near Gecimli.

To Tunceli.

The hotel bed was extremely comfortable, so, although I was awake by 5.30am, I felt thoroughly rested. I packed everything I could, showered, dressed and was downstairs by 6.15am because I had been told that breakfast was served from 6.00am, even though it was a Sunday. The breakfast had, indeed, been spread out, so I began to eat. I had already paid my bill on arrival the day before and was hoping to catch the 7.30am departure for Tunceli. I had two cheeses, black and green olives, tomatoes, sliced meat, bread, cherry and strawberry jam, chocolate and hazelnut spread, honey, a boiled egg, helva and lots of tea.

The breakfast room in the Gulistan Hotel, Erzincan.

I rushed upstairs and was on the street just after 7.00am. Roadworks had forced all traffic to take a detour, but with the help of an elderly man, I found the correct stop for buses to the otogar. I needed the number one and the timetable suggested that services began just before 7.00am and ran about every 15 minutes, even on a Sunday. A number one arrived on time, set off and got me to the otogar by 7.25am. I ran to the office of the company operating buses to Tunceli to find I was not the last passenger buying a ticket. The bus was going all the way to Diyarbakir.

The day had started in perfect fashion and, to add to my pleasure, the sun shone brightly from a sky with very few clouds. The mountains enclosing Erzincan to the north and south looked all the better for the patches of snow on their slopes.

For the first 50 kilometres of the journey, we went east along the valley of the Euphrates as if destined for Erzurum. The valley floor for most of the way was flat and quite wide with some trees, fields and pasture, the latter supporting herds of cattle. The mountains, albeit mostly rounded rather than with rock faces and peaks, remained north and south of the road. The ones to the south had extensive patches of snow on their north-facing slopes. Any sense of sadness or solemnity I may have had the day before (because of the poverty, the rundown streets near the pazar, the many building sites and road improvement projects designed to enhance an economically challenged city, the ill-equipped zoo where the welfare of the animals came second to entertaining human visitors, the large number of dogs roaming at will, the oppressive air of Sunni piety that encouraged many women to dress completely in black and cover their whole body except for their eyes and the top of their nose, and the almost complete lack of opportunity to interact with women) had completely gone. Turkey was working its magic yet again.

For part of the way east, the railway was in view from the road, but no trains passed us. The valley began to narrow as we approached Tanyeri and the river, the road and the railway became close companions. However, the valley floor was still flat enough for the Euphrates to be quite wide and at one point it had burst its banks flooding some nearby pasture. We drove beside a pretty railway station with a water crane in very good condition, a water crane similar to one I had seen the day before at Erzincan station (steam locomotives must occasionally use the line, perhaps pulling trains for railway enthusiasts). A little later, we turned right off the main road and headed south to Tunceli via Pulumur. We crossed the Euphrates and went under a well-built stone bridge that carried the railway further east. A sign beside the road informed people that they were entering Tunceli province and, very close to the sign, we drove beside an old jandarma post. I was reminded that Tunceli province in general and Tunceli town in particular had felt like occupied territory when I previously travelled along the road. The fact that no jandarma were in the post near the road sign suggested that things were now more relaxed. Thankfully, the next few days confirmed that they were.

The bus boy walked along the aisle providing passengers with tea, coffee, fruit juice, water and a squirt of kolonya.

As soon as we entered Tunceli province, we began to ascend a gorge-like valley with rugged rock walls that soon had us at the highest point on the road from where very pretty views of rounded hills, pasture, wild flowers and trees with new leaves led the eye toward villages and snow-smudged mountains, the latter in the distance. Cattle gave way to sheep. At one point it looked as if we were almost as high as the highest mountains to the south, but this was not the case. Why? Because one of the mountains was almost completely covered in snow.

We reached the pass where a large but shabby building was used to store motor vehicles and other equipment so that maintenance workers could keep the road open during heavy snowfalls. The views of forest, snow-capped mountains and pasture with wild flowers on rounded hills were sublime. Small villages nestled in the undulations. The road was far more beautiful than during trips in the middle of summer when all the snow had melted and the bold colours that persisted on the land until early in June had disappeared because of the absence of rain.

We began to descend and cattle grazed on the pasture. We arrived in Pulumur, an overwhelmingly modern town with houses and small apartment blocks dispersed along the valley and in a few self-contained mahalles on the surrounding slopes. Decorated that day and for at least another week with lots of bunting for the different political parties, Pulumur’s commercial heart was very small, so much so that trips to Tunceli, Erzincan or even Tercan were necessary for many people to conduct certain types of business or access supplies, food items included if they were a little out of the ordinary. However, Pulumur’s situation was delightful and roads to nearby villages in the hills and mountains probably led to interesting destinations.

As soon as we left the centre of Pulumur, the road entered a meandering valley with a river that tumbled over rocks of different sizes. Small orchards existed where the land flattened, but for most of the time, the road was enclosed by rock walls, wild trees and small patches of pasture on the slopes. We drove beside an old stone bridge with a single high arch in need of restoration and a large but abandoned army or jandarma camp. Some of the buildings in the camp had been trashed, no doubt by local Alevi males who regarded them as symbols of the government in Ankara that had always discriminated against them, not least during the period when the AKP had dominated Turkish politics. However, even worse oppression than that of the AKP prevailed in the 1930s. More about this later.

The valley gradually widened and, in the process, so did the river as it flowed less vigorously. The road could now take a straighter and more level course. Isolated houses were near the road with a few fields and an orchard nearby, and the trees looked a delight as their young pale green leaves fluttered in the gentle breeze like the wings of small birds. But still in the distance were the snow-smudged mountains. With luck, I would be among them later in the day. What an entry to Tunceli province, which was still better known locally by its old name of Dersim. Tunceli was the only province in Turkey with an Alevi majority. I was more excited with every kilometre that lay behind us.

About 40 kilometres from the town of Tunceli, we drove through a small village in a beautiful situation, but in the centre of the village was a large apartment block within a compound heavily protected with walls, barbed wire and razor wire. This was another army or jandarma camp. Although unoccupied, it could very quickly be brought back into use should unrest among the local people recur. It felt almost like the good old, bad old days.

From now on, I will call the town Tunceli. When referring to the province of Tunceli, I will use the preferred local name of Dersim. There will be a few occasions when I use Dersim to describe more than merely the province of Tunceli. When doing this, I am including parts of provinces that share borders with Tunceli province that have large or majority Alevi populations and are therefore thought by local people to be part of Tunceli province/Dersim, although they are not formally recognised as such by the government in Ankara.

By now, the road to Tunceli was excellent. However, the road occasionally entered short tunnels, tunnels not driven through the rock, but built with concrete to protect the road from avalanches or rocks falling from the surrounding hills and mountains. There were also a few short tunnels driven through the rock and, because one such tunnel had neither a concrete lining nor an archway at each end, it looked like a natural feature. A few trees were in blossom and many beehives had been arranged in lines on some of the patches of pasture full of wild flowers.

It was 9.15am and the digital clock in the bus suggested the temperature outside was 18 degrees centigrade. Passengers bored with the scenery (?!?!) could operate screens attached to the back of the seat in front them to access free films, TV channels or radio stations. I thought about many of the buses we had in the UK that cost much more to travel on, but did not have services comparable to the ones in the bus in which I was travelling through eastern Turkey from Erzincan to Tunceli. Such services included free liquid refreshments and the occasional small snack as well as the entertainment just identified.

Water tumbled down a rock face creating a cascade about 25 metres long, but the stream and waterfall would dry up completely in a few weeks when all the snow had melted from the surrounding slopes. Because the valley remained quite narrow, villages were rarely encountered, but isolated houses with fields and orchards persisted. However, a lot of houses had been abandoned or destroyed. It was quite likely that at least some of the houses had been destroyed by the army or the jandarma. It was routine for the authorities to destroy the houses of people suspected of or known to be in sympathy with political or terrorist groups that wanted to end discrimination against minorities such as the Alevis and Kurds.

A road led to the east for about 12 kilometres to Nazimiye. The road ascended a side valley along which a river flowed before adding its water to the Pulumur Cayi that we had been following for many kilometres. Near the point at which the two rivers met, the Pulumur Cayi spread quite wide and a few small but low-lying islands broke the surface with scrub and patches of grass. The river then narrowed once more so it was about 20 metres wide and, not long after, we passed where local people liked to come for picnics at the weekend or during public holidays. High above the road, the army had built low turret-like gun emplacements from where soldiers could survey the surrounding countryside from positions of relative safety and security. The gun emplacements looked abandoned. The bus had not stopped once so the police, the army or the jandarma could check passengers’ ID, which seemed to confirm that the gun emplacements were empty.

About 20 kilometres from Tunceli, the valley widened to a greater extent than since Pulumur. The river was about 30 metres wide. Rounded hills lay along both valley walls. Although the land looked a little drier and hotter than further north, there were lots of fields, meadows, orchards, beehives, cattle, horses and mules. A man cut long grass with a scythe attached to a long wooden handle. A rock wall above the river was slowly eroding into pinnacles reminiscent of some of the landscapes in Cappadocia.

Tunceli.

We arrived in Tunceli, a relatively small provincial capital in terms of population. The town centre dominated the slopes where the Munzur and Pulumur rivers joined. True, the suburbs seemed to stretch for many kilometres, especially to the south leading to the rapidly expanding campus of the provincial university, but the town centre was compact and clearly defined, and the otogar was centrally located. At first sight, Tunceli looked overwhelmingly modern and nothing I found or saw later led to that first impression being radically altered. However, because of the two rivers just mentioned, the surrounding hills and mountains, the good road links with nearby towns and villages, the unusually attractive apartment blocks painted bright colours, a small but lively pazar and many remarkably friendly people with a refreshingly liberal outlook on life, there was much to admire. By the time I had to leave Tunceli less than 48 hours after arriving, the town had emerged as one of my all-time favourite Turkish provincial capitals despite the absence of major monuments. What were the most important reasons for this? The people and the surrounding area. Even the substantial town centre presence of the police and the army did not compromise my enjoyment because, although armoured vehicles were parked on or patrolled the streets, the police and the soldiers remained in their heavily fortified compounds for most of the time.

Tunceli.

I walked from the otogar to an open space overlooking the Munzur Cayi below. A small park, some benches and the statue of a turbaned male who must have lived some time ago created a very attractive setting for views up the Munzur Cayi and the mountains to the north. A very large and quite expensive hotel overlooked the Munzur Cayi to the south of the park, but I wanted somewhere not so lavish. I asked a woman without a headscarf and her male companion about other hotels and they directed me to one in the nearby pazar. I arrived at the hotel to find a man reading a book about Che Guevara who seemed to share ownership of the business with a friend. The man put down his book and said a room with en suite facilities and breakfast cost 50TL a night. This seemed a good price, especially for somewhere so centrally located, so I agreed to stay two nights (I had a lot to see around Tunceli). The room had a balcony providing views over part of the pazar, which enhanced the benefits of staying.

Tunceli.

I unpacked a few things, but was out very quickly. I had a walk around the central business district noting immediately that only a very few women wore a headscarf, none covered their face and none dressed in black from head to toe. Most women dressed in clothes similar to the ones that women might wear in Europe or North America and walked around on their own or with friends and relations. They shopped and visited cafés or pastanes with the same freedom enjoyed by men. They chatted with me, an unknown male, without embarrassment or fear that they were contravening unnecessarily restrictive codes of social convention, and it was obvious that a majority of local men supported the more relaxed and integrated relations that existed between the sexes. I saw more women driving cars in Tunceli than I had seen for the week before arriving in the town. Moreover, bunting and posters confirmed that left-wing political sentiments were dominant and support for the AKP was almost non-existent. Consequently, my admiration for Tunceli rose another half dozen notches. By Turkish standards, Tunceli was a town largely shaped by a liberal and progressive outlook, a liberal and progressive outlook that only prevailed elsewhere in large urban centres in the west such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa (however, a liberal and progressive outlook did not prevail in all the districts in the cities just listed. Some districts suffered from a very oppressive Sunni Muslim outlook that had a particularly detrimental effect on gender equality and relations between the sexes).

View east from Tunceli.

Alcohol was on sale in many shops and lokantas, and one small shop in the pazar (where about only half the businesses bothered to open because it was Sunday) sold large bottles of Efes Malt for a very reasonable 4.5TL. Tunceli was my kinda town!

A tea garden beside the town’s main square had been taken over as the local headquarters for the HDP and groups associated with it, and its display of bunting was so spectacular that I spent some time taking photos and chatting with HDP members and supporters. A large statue of Ataturk stood on a stone plinth in the middle of the square. If the great dictator had been alive and knew that a party such as the HDP was so popular in the east of the country, he would have been apoplectic. The HDP primarily represented the interests of the Kurds whose existence he would not even acknowledge. A few large glasses of raki would have been required to calm him down.

HDP headquarters, Tunceli.

HDP headquarters, Tunceli.

HDP headquarters, Tunceli.

Ataturk’s statue, Tunceli.

It was in Tunceli where I first saw posters with a photo of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya wearing a cloth cap and resembling a working class hero of the Soviet Union in the 1930s (some of the posters identified Kaypakkaya as the “Partizan”). Kaypakkaya also looked like a young Robert De Niro around the time he starred in “Taxi Driver”.

Posters with pictures of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya included, Tunceli.

Ibrahim Kaypakkaya lived from 1949 to 1973. He was an important figure in the communist movement in Turkey. He was the founder of the Communist Party of Turkey (Marxist-Leninist) and its armed wing carried out deadly attacks in Tunceli, Malatya and Gaziantep. At least one such attack led to the murder of a village muhtar whose information to the security forces had resulted in a gunfight during which some of Kaypakkaya’s allies had been killed.

On 24th January 1973, Turkish soldiers attacked Kaypakkaya and some of his supporters in the mountains near Tunceli. Kaypakkaya was badly wounded and left for dead, but he managed to shelter in a cave before making his way to a village where he asked a teacher to shelter him. The teacher provided him with a room to recuperate in, but he then locked the door and reported Kaypakkaya’s whereabouts to the army. Kaypakkaya was taken to the prison in Diyarbakir which was notorious at the time for the brutal treatment of its inmates. He was interrogated and tortured. On 18th May, he died from gunshot wounds. It is alleged that his body was mutilated and cut into many pieces.

Posters with pictures of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya included, Tunceli.

After his death, Kaypakkaya became a martyr for the Turkish communist movement because he “chose to die rather than give information”. Leftists in Turkey more generally remember him as a symbol of resistance to tyranny in all its forms. He left behind some writings that offered a critique of Kemalism, the ideology that Ataturk developed and which shaped Turkish political thinking until at least the end of the 1980s. He also reflected on Kurdish identity in a nation state which pretended that the Kurds did not exist in the 1960s and early 1970s.

As I took photos of the posters, four men walked past and gave me the thumbs-up sign to show their solidarity with what Kaypakkaya represented.