Tuncelı report of major ragıp gümüşpala (1936-1937)

Ragıp Gümüşpala was born in Edirne in 1897. Ragıp Gümüşpala, who graduated from the Military Academy in 1916, fought on various war fronts during the First World War. Towards the end of the war, he was captured by the English. After living a life of captivity for a while in Egypt, he came to Turkey and joined the National Struggle. After the proclamation of the republic, he participated in the operations to suppress the rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925) and Koçuşağı (1926). After carrying out various duties, he became an intelligence officer of Tunceli governorate and command post between 1936 and 1938. He is known to have fallen captive to the rebels during operations to suppress the rebellion. After the 27 May 1960 coup, Ragıp Gümüşpala became the Chief of General Staff. He carried out this duty for a short period and retired in the same year. He founded Adalet Partisi (Justice Party) in 1961 and became a member of parliament of Izmir. Major Ragıp Gümüşpala recorded his observations and analyses on the people of Dersim as a report. Gümüşpala, who examines the people of Dersim in terms of their race, religion, sect and traditions, put forward some striking arguments. Gümüşpala reports that Tunceli Act went into effect in 1935 and the juridical and administrative staff took the office after Elaziz was established as the center of Tunceli Province. He expresses how the Republic’s government would make the region prosperous by road, bridge and school projects and what projects would be implemented in order to save the people of the region from poverty. Gümüşpala underlines the necessary precautions, presenting the elements distinguishing the Alawite and Sunni people. He manifested how the Qizilbashs moved away from the Sunni Turkish society; the sayyids and dedes misled the Qizilbashs; muftis and hodjas misled the Sunnis; how the religious authorities disconnected these two societies. He touched upon the influence of Christianity on the belief and culture of the Qizilbashs. He reports that the Armenians built church-like buildings in the regions deemed as sacred by the Qizilbashes and made them kiss a piece of bone that they put in the middle of a cross, claiming that it was the finger of His Holiness Ali. He reports that the pilgrim sites of the Qizilbashs were also used by the Armenians during the Ottoman period; and both of the races worshipped in the same location. Gümüşpala grounds the reason of the Qizilbash’s residence in Dersim, a geography where living conditions are hard, on the Sect Wars between Selim I and Ismail I in the 16th century. He states that the Qizilbashs found a space for living in Dersim having a rough terrain as a result of the politics of suppression inflicted on them by Selim I. Gümüşpala, who believed that the Qizilbash of Dersim had Turkish origins, tried to explain this argument through elements of language and culture. That the villages, clans, places and persons were referred with their Turkish names, that the sentence structures they used were compatible with Turkish syntax, that the tombstones were made of sculptures of ram, that their folk songs and tunes were the same as those of the Turks in the Central Anatolia were given as proofs of this thesis. He thinks that Turkish language of the region differs because the people of Dersim married Persian and Zaza people during their migration from Khorasan to Anatolia. He thinks that a distorted version of the Turkish language, that is a mixture of Turkish and Persian, took shape as a result of these marriages. He argues that the Qizilbashs of Dersim have sacred spaces in the mountains and in the forests because of the Shamanist tradition which the Turks had previously as belief. He claims that the name of Şamuşağı clan, located in Ovacık, was derived from Shaman/Shamo uşağı. Furthermore, that the dedes had the ability of prophecy is attributed to the Shaman belief. In his report, Gümüşpala argues that the influence and authority of the state can be realized in the region if the influence of sayyids and landlords decreases. Although certain parts of the report were previously published, the report which will be published contains much new information that can contribute to Turkey’s recent history.