Armenian woman tells Turkish MPs how soldiers killed people during
Dersim pogroms

news.am
June 15, 2012 | 13:51

Turkish Parliament’s Committee studying pogroms in Dersim listened to
the testimony of 80-year-old Armenian survivor Fatima Yavuz.

Fatima, who was 5 years old during the Dersim pogroms, said she learnt
about her nationality only in 1995, Vatan daily reports. Two years ago
she found out that her real name is Asilkhan Kiremitichyan. The woman
said her parents and other residents of the village were shot dead by
the soldiers near the river, later their bodies were thrown into the
water.

“I was brought up by Á Turkish muslim family where I faced torture and
violence. One of my step-mothers beat me so much that she broke my
fingers. When I was thirteen, they married me to a 35-year-old man. I
had a life full of sufferings,” she said.

The Turkish government exterminated thousands of villages in Dersim in
1938. The pogroms claimed lives of 100,000 people. Thousands of the
1915 Armenian Genocide survivors were killed in 1938.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress