Finish the executions before Atatürk arrives

Thanks to this occasion, what happened in Dersim is being recalled once again and historians are relating the facts and details about the incidents. The role of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the CHP in these incidents is being discussed. The memoirs of those who witnessed them are remembered.

One of the people who has come to the agenda in this context is former Foreign Minister İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil. Çağlayangil’s memories cover the time of Atatürk, İsmet İnönü, Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, Süleyman Demirel and Turgut Özal.

“I saw three sultans and five presidents,” he frequently notes. When I was buying Çağlayangil’s book of memoirs last year, I had thought that I would mostly be reading his memories of foreign policy. Indeed, he had served as a foreign minister for 10 years in Demirel’s governments.

Çağlayangil had first come to Ankara in 1925 and started to work as a public servant and eventually became the deputy general director at the police department. He had then served as a governor for 15 years before starting a political career at the Justice Party (AP), becoming a minister. His memoirs are like a summary of the recent past.

Çağlayangil is a figure who traveled on Atatürk’s famous train, and who saw the Yassıada days, when statesmen would be classified like cattle and sheep, and who conducted negotiations with French President d’Estaing, who, in later times, became a strong opponent of Turkey, and who met with Tito, and who was jailed in Zincirbozan after the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980.

Çağlayangil was so closely involved in the Dersim Rebellion in 1937 that he personally arranged the execution of the Seyit Rıza, the leader of the rebellion, in the Wheat Square in Elazığ. Reading what happened then, and seeing that the problems we face today concerning democracy and the rule of law were not so different in the past, one unfortunately feels sorry. His account of the incident is awash with proof that our judiciary has never functioned in a healthy manner since the early times.

Atatürk will come to Elazığ by train and then travel to the region by road in order to attend the opening ceremony of the Singeç bridge on the Tigris. Meanwhile, the Dersim rebellion has been suppressed, and Seyit Rıza and his supporters have been captured and put on trial in Elazığ. A crowd of 6,000 people wearing white pants have rushed to Elazığ in order to request that Atatürk should pardon Seyit Rıza. The police chief of the time instructs Çağlayangil to finish the executions before Atatürk arrives in Elazığ on Monday. There is no possibility of holding trials at the weekend, they have to do it. Moreover, the prosecutor in Elazığ does not like to breach rules.

The deputy prosecutor, who is a friend of Çağlayangil, finds a solution: “Tell the governor that the prosecutors should go on a leave. I will do what you want.” In other words, the court will convene on holiday and executions will be conducted. There is no right of appeal in that region. Abdullah Pasha will approve the court decision as commander of martial law, and that is it. He has already written “the above-mentioned decision is hereby approved,” and signed the bottom of a blank sheet of paper. At night on Sunday, the session is held with the artificial illumination provided by the car headlights. The judge objects, saying that “there is no audience,” but this is quickly arranged. Finally, the court gives its decision, and a Romani is hired to conduct the executions, and he is paid TL 10 for each man he executes. Thus, the executions are finished before Atatürk arrives.

As a person who has witnessed such strange judicial processes and several coups, Çağlayangil also wrote in his memoirs about the lessons he had derived from them. The most important point he underlines is that no issue can be settled by force. “May 27, Yassıada, September 12. ... One cannot achieve anything with brute force. More than 200 Grand Viziers served in the Ottoman Empire, and 67 of them were hanged and about the same number were overthrown. All voiced the same justification: The country was rolling into an abyss, but this intervention saved it. The process of saving was repeated 110 times. What sort of problem is this as you come close to the edge, but you would not fall into it or be saved from it?” Çağlayangil argues that Atatürk always wanted to keep the military in their barracks as he was ruling the country, adding, “This is the basic problem in Turkey or the lesson I draw from my Yassıada adventure.”