"It's incredible
how many
Turkish soldiers
are standing
behind one
Kurd sitting."

--Memo Yetkin,
Kurdish publisher
living in Sweden


In those days, we didn't know much about Dersim or the history of the Kurdish movement. We were very eager to know more from whoever had some relationship to Kurdish history.

Interview with Reso Zilan, Kurdish scholar living in Sweden, September 1993
From the book, Kurdistan, In the Shadow of History.

I knew a person who studied in Istanbul in the 1960s. He met a retired army officer, who said he had been in the Kurdish area on assignment and described the things he had witnessed in Dersim. He told my friend that he had taken some pictures. One day he showed him the pictures. My friend watched to see where the officer put them. While the officer was out, he took a chance and stole the pictures. From that day on, he did his utmost not to run across him. --Reso Zilan