Fatma Yavuz, an 80-year-old Armenian survivor of the 1937-1938 Dersim (today’s Tunceli, Turkey) Massacres, sent a letter to the Turkish parliament’s subcommittee on the Dersim affair, wrote about the suffering she endured, and demanded an apology for all this.     

The elderly Armenian told that he was given to a Turkish family, during the Dersim Massacres, and this family was very cruel to her.

“I learned only in 1995 that the fact of my being Armenian was kept secret for 57 years, and I learned my real [Armenian] name at the age of 78,” Fatma Yavuz wrote in her letter, and demanded that their seized lands be returned, her relatives be found, and a formal apology be made.  

To note, Turkey’s PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan had stated that, if necessary, he would apologize and is apologizing for the Dersim Massacres, on behalf of the state. 

The Turkish authorities had quelled the Dersim uprising with bloodshed and eradicated thousands of villages. In line with different sources, up to 100,000 people lost their lives during the Dersim Massacres.

Also, thousands of 1915 Armenian Genocide survivors, who had found shelter in Dersim’s villages, were subjected to a second genocide in 1938.