Building Anti-Dam Resistance in Communities Historically in Conflict with the State: Role of Collective Memories of Repression and Struggle

The neoliberal thrust of the Turkish state has gained new momentum in the 2000s with the liberalization of energy markets and vigorous promotion of hydroelectric dams across the rivers of Turkey. While this policy of extensive damming has been met with widespread ecological resistance by various local communities almost everywhere, it has also coincided with increasing calls for pluralism by historically marginalized and discriminated communities such as Alevis and Kurds - the largest religious and ethnic minorities of Turkey respectively. There are Kurdish and Turkish speaking Alevis in Turkey and Kurdish Alevis predominantly live in the mountainous Dersim area (officially renamed as Tunceli in 1935). The history of Kurdish Alevis of Dersim is marked by a major revolt to the modern Turkish state in 1938 which was violently suppressed with the murder and deportation of hundreds of them. Dersimis have been historically left-wing, some having leadership positions in both centre left and radical left movements of the 1970s. While Alevism as an identity was not the focus of their political struggle in the 1970s, with the emergence of identity politics in the 1990s and the rise of political Islam in Turkey, there has been a revival of Alevism as a cultural and religious identity. The 2000s witnessed the building of a robust grassroots resistance in the Munzur Valley in Dersim - as well as in other valleys across Turkey - against the numerous hydropower dam projects planned on Munzur, the major river of Dersim. Anti-dam resistance in different countries of the world is widely studied and there is a burgeoning literature on grassroots ecological resistance in Turkey. The cultural turn in the study of social movements reflected a new focus on the symbolic dimensions of movement building, including the interrelations between collective action discourses, the processes of construction of collective identity and collective memory and narratives. This paper is an attempt at exploring the collective action discourse of the resistance against the hydropower dams in Dersim and understanding the role of collective memories of discrimination and banishment dating back to 1938, as well as the long-lasting traditions of political struggle against the state in the construction of both the collective identity and the collective action discourse of the anti-dam resistance. The research is based on an ethnographic fieldwork involving semi-structured interviews with key figures of the anti-dam resistance, as well as the study of text, imagery and slogans produced. The paper argues that in communities historically in conflict with the state, contested ethnic, religious and political identities are articulated with livelihood concerns arising from hydropower dams’ harmful effects on agriculture and biodiversity. As such, the discourse against the dams is based on narratives of grievances of the past, as well as those of the present and resistance against the dams is built by reconstructing the existing collective identities through a strategic remembrance of collective memories of repression by the state and struggle against it.