The matter of the genocide, which the Turkish authorities committed in 1937-1938 in Dersim—today’s Tunceli, Turkey—is transferred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. 

The case report, which was signed by several attorneys from the US, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Turkey, plus the 300-page petition were submitted to ICC by lawyer Erdal Dogan, the Kurdish ANF news agency reports.  

Pursuant to the petition, charges are filed against eighty-one people, including Turkey’s serving PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Kenan Evren, the former president of Turkey and the architect behind the 1980 military coup in the country.  

To note, 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 villages, were subjected to a second genocide in 1938.