Tunceli, where they do things differently

First things first. Tunceli will not decide the fate of the nation. Even to reach this remote provincial capital in central east Turkey is an adventure. You board a rusty car ferry to cross a finger tributary of the Keban dam on, follow a winding road to a plateau of the Munzur mountains and then, finally, ford the river at the bottom of the vertiginously poised town. Some 53 million voters are eligible to vote in this Sunday’s Turkish presidential elections. A mere 50,000 of them live in Tunceli.  Less a weathervane for the rest of Turkey, it is an epicentre of contrariness, a high altitude sanctuary of dissent. 
 
And that, pretty much, explains why it is worth the detour.
 
A Turkey that cannot accommodate the political impulses of Tunceli cannot hope to take its place on its world stage.  To some that impulse is how to accommodate the aspirations of Turkey’s Kurds “Solve this or it will bring you down as it has other political parties,” is the warning of local politician Doğu Ergin to the most likely winner of Sunday’s poll.
 
Ergin is the head of the local Democratic Regions Party (DBP), a new party that is part of a coalition of Kurdish nationalist parties that includes the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the People’s Democracy Party (HDP).  Yet the political impulses in Tunceli are hard to put in a single box.
 
They just do things differently. While the rest of Turkey was sweltering in the Ramadan sun, the first sight to greet the P24-sponsored party of journalists attending the election tour was of a café society in our shady hotel garden, sipping their beers or cokes.  It would be tempting to say that this display of non-conformism was a product of Tunceli’s Alevi background. But Ali Ekber Yurt, who leads the local Alevi Cem Evi, complains that young people are increasingly disinterested in following their tradition.
 
Tunceli may have the lowest density of population of any province in Turkey, but it punches above its weight. It has the highest rate of literacy and once upon a time the highest number of successful university applicants. Among its famous sons is the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu whose family was exiled here after the notorious 1937 Dersim uprising in which thousands (some say tens of thousands) perished.
 
And while Selahattin Demirtaş (the presidential candidate endorsed by the pro-Kurdish parties) was born down the road in the Talu district of Elazığ, he shares a Zaza ethnic background with the majority of those from Tunceli.
 
Dersim (as the district is traditionally called) is as much a centre of the old Left as it is of Kurdish nationalism. Although the BDP romped home in Tunceli municipality at the 30 March local election, there is no guarantee that the candidate that party endorses, Selahattin Demirtaş will be the frontrunner on Sunday.
 
The only certainty is that while Tayyip Erdoğan may top the poll in the rest of the country, in Tunceli he is destined to come last.

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