Erecting a statue in the land of the fallen: gendered dynamics of the making of Tunceli and commemorating Seyyid Rıza in Dersim

This article analyses the gendered, spatial and emotional dynamics of the Dersim Genocide (1937/38) and attempts to commemorate the genocidal violence. It traces the transition initiated by pro-Kurdish municipalities in Turkey’s public sphere during the relatively liberal political atmosphere of the early 2000s, which switched from the spatial politics of denial to that of mourning. In illustrating the role of gendered military violence both in the destruction of Dersim and in the formation of Tunceli, the article underlines the role of spatial militarisation in upholding a regime of denial. It specifically focusses on the gendered aesthetic framing of the statue of Seyyid Rıza (1863–1937, inaugurated in 2010), who became a symbol of resistance after being executed as part of genocidal violence. The statue of Seyyid Rıza challenges the Turkish denial regime by turning a previously ungrievable dead body into an object of pride. However, Seyyid Rıza’s statue could preserve its precarious place and remained within the ‘limits of sayable’ by not offering a future prospect that competes with the military masculinist aesthetic regime of the statues of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk