Dersim mountains, a land of resistance and beauty

Speaking of Dersim, where she joined the PKK, guerrilla Dicle Avaşin said: "The rebellion of the Dersim mountains gives people confidence. Every stone, every tree, the water tell about what happened in history."

It is said that history is hidden not in what is written, but in what is not. Those who will change the course of the unwritten history are also those who would leave their mark on history. They are freedom fighters, fighting relentlessly against the sovereigns, oppressors, the given system. Fighters fight, struggle, pay the price, but succeed. And write about those who resisted in history. Dersim is one of the places that resisted the persecution in Kurdistan. The people of Dersim did not bow to the enemy by resisting in the rebel mountains.

Both men and women, young and old have chosen to be themselves in these lands. The resistance of our people was not forgotten and today the Kurdish Freedom Movement reached its peak with the struggle of the PKK. The fighters who resist in the mountains take the greatest revenge in history. Dicle Avaşin, one of these freedom fighters, talked about her guerrilla time in Dersim.

Guerilla Dicle Avaşin saud the following about her time in Dersim: "I want to talk about the geography of Dersim. Maybe what I tell does not make justice to this beauty, but something is left to history when you tell about it. I came to the mountains, the place of struggle to be a part of this history. I had heard about the Dersim mountains before, I was always wondering, so I decided to join in Dersim and focused on the Dersim mountains.

When I stepped foot in Dersim and its lands, I experienced very different feelings, I relive history, I felt as if I have always lived with our people. We had heard about the massacre of the people of Dersim before, but coming to the mountains and seeing what happened here, touching and living made me feel the resistance and pain of our people more."

The guerrillas secure their presence mostly in the mountains and areas they can trust. In her evaluations, Dicle Avaşin said the following about the mountains: "The rebellion of the Dersim mountains creates the feeling that you are safe. Every stone, every tree, the water, all tell about what happened in the past. There are natural caves here. The guerrillas build places to protect themselves each winter. While we were wandering around the site, we came across a natural cave and started digging some places to make it suitable for us to stay.

Every comrade could hear and feel the presence of the great massacres that took place in the Laç Valley. Here everywhere turned into a bloodbath with the massacre in 1938... The screams of hundreds of women who threw themselves off the rocks and cliffs in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy echo in the Dersim mountains. These feelings make history come to life again.”