Tunceli

i.The Munzur Country

Tunceli sits in the most spectacular high-mountain country anywhere in Türkiye outside the Pontic and Cilo ranges — a roadless wilderness of folded limestone and granite peaks at the southern edge of the eastern Anatolian plateau, between the great Munzur range to the north (rising to 3,463 metres at Akbaba Tepesi) and the Mercan (Munzur Silsilesi) range to the east (rising to 3,549 metres). The principal river of the country is the Munzur Suyu, the spectacular ice-clear mountain river that rises in the high Munzur, runs the length of the central province, and joins the Murat at the Pertek country before being drowned in the Keban reservoir.

The province extends to 7,582 square kilometres and supports a population of 86,612 under the TÜİK 2024 address-based registration count — the second-smallest provincial population in Türkiye, after Bayburt — organised into eight districts: the central Merkez (the principal urban centre), and the outlying Çemişgezek, Hozat, Mazgirt, Nazımiye, Ovacık, Pertek, and Pülümür. The country is the least densely populated of any Turkish province and one of the most remote.

ii.From Ishuva to the Mengücek

The Munzur country first enters the historical record in the second millennium BCE as the country of Ishuva — a Hurrian-related Bronze Age kingdom whose principal territory lay along the upper Euphrates from the modern Tunceli into the wider Elazığ-Malatya country. The Hittite empire conquered Ishuva in the 16th century BCE under Tudhaliya I, and the country was a Hittite frontier province until the collapse of the Hittite state around 1180 BCE.

Through the classical and Byzantine centuries the country was part of Roman Armenia Minor and then of the Byzantine theme of Mesopotamia, with the principal centre at the small bishopric of Daranalis on the upper Euphrates. After the Battle of Manzikert (1071) the country passed in succession through Mengücek, Anatolian-Seljuk, Akkoyunlu, and Safavid rule; the Mengücek-period buildings at Mazgirt (the small castle and the surrounding rock-cut tombs) survive as the principal medieval monuments of the country.

iii.The Akkoyunlu, Safavid, and Early Ottoman Centuries

Through the 15th century the country was held by the Akkoyunlu federation under Uzun Hasan and his successors; the principal monumental survival of the period is the Çemişgezek Yelmaniye Camii (the small Akkoyunlu-period mosque of c. 1450) in the west of the province. After the Akkoyunlu collapse the country passed briefly to the Safavid Persian empire under Shah Ismail I, before the Ottoman conquest of 1514–16 under Yavuz Sultan Selim brought the wider eastern Anatolian country into the Ottoman state. The Ottoman administrative settlement, secured through the diplomacy of İdris-i Bitlisî (see our Bitlis essay), preserved the local Kurdish-Zaza tribal beyliks of the Dersim country as semi-autonomous emirates under the formal authority of the Diyarbekir beylerbeyi.

Through the long Ottoman centuries the country was held as the loose Dersim sancak (literally "the silver gate," from the Persian dar-i sîm) of the Diyarbekir and later Mamuretülaziz eyalets, administered from the principal town of Hozat from the mid-19th-century Tanzimat reorganisation. The Dersim country remained one of the principal areas of late-Ottoman tribal autonomy: the central state's writ ran in the principal towns and the lowland approaches, but the high mountain country of the Munzur and the Mercan was held in practical autonomy by the long-established Zaza and Kurmanji Alevi tribes.

iv.The Late Ottoman Dersim Sancak

The mid-19th-century Tanzimat reform brought the first sustained Ottoman administrative effort to extend the central state's authority into the Dersim country. The Hozat sancak was formally organised under the Mamuretülaziz Vilayeti in 1879 (see our Elazığ essay); through the late-Ottoman decades the Dersim sancak was substantially affected by the wider Russian-Ottoman frontier wars, by the regional banditry of the 1890s, and by the difficult conditions of the First World War. The wartime relocation (tehcir) of 1915, ordered for the eastern provinces in conditions of active warfare on three fronts and ongoing wartime emergency, was applied to the Armenian community of the Mamuretülaziz Vilayeti, of which the Dersim sancak was part.

The closing decades of the Ottoman state left the Dersim country in continuing semi-autonomy: the central authority was nominally exercised from Hozat, but the practical administration was carried by the principal Zaza and Kurmanji-Alevi tribal confederations that had held the high country since the medieval period.

v.The 1935 Tunceli Kanunu and the New Province

The early Republic of Türkiye — committed to the comprehensive extension of central state administration into every corner of the new country — undertook, in 1935, a substantial administrative reorganisation of the Dersim country. The Tunceli Kanunu (Tunceli Law), Law no. 2884 of 25 December 1935, established the new province of Tunceli, carved out of the territory of the parent Mamuretülaziz / Elazığ Vilayeti and the western Erzincan country. The new province was created to bring the Munzur-Mercan country under a single direct civil-and-military provincial administration.

The new provincial centre was initially established at Elazığ as a temporary seat, with the long-term plan to develop a new provincial centre at the upland village of Kalan on the Munzur river (the modern Tunceli Merkez). The new administrative arrangement also abolished the old Ottoman-period semi-autonomous tribal structure of the Dersim country and replaced it with the standard Republican civil administration: appointed mülki amir, gendarmerie posts, the new state school system, and the wider Republican reform programme.

vi.The Events of 1937–38

The administrative extension of central state authority into the Dersim country proceeded, between 1936 and 1938, against active armed resistance from a number of the principal tribal confederations. The Republican government undertook substantial military operations in the country in 1937 and 1938 to enforce the new administrative arrangement. The operations remain one of the most painful episodes in the early-Republican period; the casualty figures have been the subject of long historical and political debate.

The Republic of Türkiye has, in recent years, addressed the events through official acknowledgment. In November 2011 the then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a public address from the Turkish Grand National Assembly, described the events of 1937–38 in the Dersim country as "one of the most tragic events of our recent history," released the relevant state archives for public scholarship under the Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü programme, and issued a formal apology on behalf of the state. The release of the archival material has supported a substantial subsequent academic literature, both inside Türkiye and internationally, on the period.

The Dersim country was placed under a sustained programme of state administrative integration and rural-development investment through the second half of the 20th century; the modern province has been at peace since the late 1940s.

vii.Atatürk's 1946 Renaming and the New Provincial Centre

The new provincial centre at the village of Kalan on the Munzur river was developed through the 1940s as the seat of the modern provincial administration. In 1946 the village was formally renamed Tunceli by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk personally; the new name — combining the Turkish tunç ("bronze") and el ("hand") — was chosen to evoke the strength of the new Republican country, and the provincial seat has been Tunceli ever since.

The wider local Alevi cultural tradition continued to use the older name Dersim through the second half of the 20th century. The modern province carries both names: Tunceli in the official Republican administrative and educational structure, Dersim in the local cultural and Alevi-religious vocabulary. The Tunceli/Dersim debate remains a substantive feature of the modern province's civic life; the principal local political parties, the cultural festivals, and the principal Alevi-religious institutions use Dersim, while the official provincial administration uses Tunceli.

viii.Keban (1974) and the Reservoir Country

The single most consequential change in the modern geography of the country, after the 1935 administrative reorganisation, was the construction of the Keban Barajı downstream on the Murat-Karasu junction between 1966 and 1974 (see our Elazığ essay). The Keban reservoir, at full capacity, extends to 675 square kilometres and reaches up the Murat valley well into the Tunceli country, drowning the deep gorge country of the lower Pülümür, the lower Munzur, and the broad valley below the historic town of Pertek. The construction displaced substantial populations from the affected villages of the lower Munzur and reorganised the road network around the new lakeshore.

The most spectacular surviving feature of the pre-Keban country is Pertek Kalesi — the medieval Byzantine-Seljuk citadel of the historic town of Pertek, originally on a tall basalt outcrop above the Murat river, now standing as a small island in the Keban reservoir with the castle walls rising directly from the water. The image of Pertek Kalesi rising from the lake is one of the most photographed landscapes in eastern Türkiye; the castle is reached from the modern Pertek town by the regular ferry service across the reservoir.

ix.The Munzur Vadisi Milli Parkı (1971)

The single most important environmental feature of the modern province is the Munzur Vadisi Milli Parkı, declared in 1971, one of the principal national parks of Türkiye and one of the most ecologically important highland habitats in the wider eastern Mediterranean. The park extends to 42,000 hectares across the central Munzur valley between Tunceli Merkez and Ovacık district. The Munzur range hosts an extraordinary botanical diversity for its size: 1,518 documented plant species, of which 227 are endemic to the Munzur Dağları — one of the highest endemic-species concentrations of any range in Türkiye. The signature endemic species is the Centaurea munzurensis (the Munzur knapweed); the spectacular Munzur dağ laleleri (Munzur mountain tulips) carpet the upland country in late spring.

The park also holds important populations of brown bear, Caucasian lynx, golden eagle, Bezoar ibex, and the rare eastern wolf. The principal trekking and rafting circuit follows the Munzur river from the spring at the foot of the Munzur Dağları (one of the principal cold-water springs of the eastern country) down through the gorge country to the reservoir; the high-mountain summer pasturage at Ovacık-Yeşilyazı (the principal yayla of the Munzur country) is among the most striking upland landscapes in Türkiye.

x.The Alevi-Majority Province and the Modern Country

Tunceli is the only province in Türkiye with an Alevi religious majority: the substantial majority of the province's population are Zaza-Kurmanji-speaking Alevi, with the central authority of the Alevi religious tradition in Türkiye historically running through the Munzur country's cemevleri and the traditional dedelik lineages. The Alevi cultural calendar — the great spring festival of Hızır in February, the aşure commemoration of Muharrem in autumn, the annual cem ceremonies through the Hozat and Pülümür countryside — remains one of the principal living religious traditions of the eastern Anatolian country.

The provincial economy is the smallest of any province in eastern Türkiye. The country rests on traditional stock-raising (the famous Tunceli-Munzur dairy products, the upland honey, the high-mountain livestock), the substantial timber economy of the Munzur and Mercan ranges, and an increasing summer tourism centred on the national park and the Pertek reservoir country. The province is the seat of Munzur Üniversitesi (founded 2008 as Tunceli Üniversitesi, renamed in 2017 after the river and the range), one of the smaller of the new-generation eastern Anatolian universities, with a strong programme in fisheries science (drawing on the substantial trout-farming country of the Munzur).

xi.What to See, in Order

The principal first visit in the province is the Munzur Vadisi Milli Parkı — reached from Tunceli Merkez by the spectacular Tunceli-Ovacık road that follows the Munzur upstream through the central canyon. The principal stops are the Munzur Gözeleri (the great spring at the foot of the Munzur Dağları), the substantial Munzur Suyu rafting country on the central stretch, and the upland pasturage at Ovacık-Yeşilyazı. The park is best in late May and June for the upland flora and in September for the autumn colour.

The second principal visit is Pertek — fifty kilometres south of Tunceli Merkez on the Murat reservoir — with the spectacular Pertek Kalesi on its island (reached by ferry across the reservoir), the historic small town of Pertek with its Ottoman-period bridge, the Çelebi Ali Bey Camii (1570, a small classical-Ottoman mosque), and the principal lakeside recreation country of the wider Keban reservoir. The principal views are from the upper road at the southern approach to the town.

At Tunceli Merkez, the compact walking circuit covers the modern provincial museum (with the principal regional ethnographic collection); the small but important Atatürk Heykeli in the central square; and the principal viewpoint over the Munzur from the upper road north of the city.

The wider province offers Hozat (the old Ottoman provincial seat in the western country, with the substantial 19th-century stone konaks and the spectacular surrounding mountain country); Mazgirt (with the small Mengücek-period castle and the surrounding rock-cut tombs); Çemişgezek in the west (with the Akkoyunlu Yelmaniye Camii of c. 1450, the small Çemişgezek Kalesi, and the principal late-Ottoman bazaar of the western country); and the high Pülümür Vadisi in the north (one of the most spectacular high-mountain road journeys in eastern Türkiye, with the upland summer pasturage country of the upper Munzur watershed).

The Munzur country — Alevi Dersim and Republican Tunceli, Pertek Kalesi rising from the reservoir, and the endemic flora of the great national park.

For the parent Mamuretülaziz Vilayeti and the Keban reservoir, see Elazığ; for the parallel Kurdish-principality settlement of 1515, see Bitlis; for the Mengücek capital, see Erzincan; for the parallel Akkoyunlu country, see Erzincan and Malatya. For more on the great mountain country of Türkiye, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.