Thinking about a memorial together

We – Seçil Yersel (from the artist collective Oda Projesi) and Nadin Reschke – have been working together on various collective projects since the early 2000s. Participatory approaches are an essential part of our artistic practice, but we had never worked together on an idea for a memorial project before.

In 2021, we were invited by the commission accompanying the memorial process to participate in the discussion about a Tertele memorial commemorating the Dersim genocide. There, in 1937 and 1938, the Turkish army committed massacres against the Alevi-Kurdish population of the region. Together with the community, we wanted to reflect on the meaning, form and location of such a memorial and use participatory artistic strategies to open a dialogue about the culture of remembrance in public space.

Our aim was to initiate a dialogue with the Dersim community and get to know people of different ages and backgrounds. We wanted to maintain our role as mediators, listen, ask questions and understand the topic beyond political terminology. We deliberately did not repeat official historiography – individual memories, experiences and feelings formed the starting point for our conversations and created a space for exchange through targeted questions.

Many community members participated in the performative conversations that we held in a room in the Dersim community over the coming months. Between March and September 2022, we met with more than 23 people for conversations lasting an hour and a half each. We asked ourselves what we needed in order to be able to talk about such a traumatic and serious event. How could we create a different form for dialogue and exchange? To make this possible, each of us took on a different role. Nadin designed a series of costumes for the participants in the performative conversations, which could only be worn during these encounters, thereby incorporating them into a kind of ritual.

Seçil, on the other hand, designed an ‘object’ that the participants could hold in their hands during the conversation: made of newspaper, branches, fabric remnants and wire. This object had a dense appearance, was lightweight and helped the speakers to concentrate and at the same time evoke further memories about this ‘object’.

During each conversation, it was passed from hand to hand. Getting dressed and undressed at the beginning and end of the conversations were important moments of transition into and out of everyday life in Berlin. Most of the conversations took place in Turkish. This meant that Seçil initiated the conversations and asked the questions, while Nadin was present as a witness.

After each conversation, we exchanged ideas and realised how enormously important it was that there were two of us involved in this process. What the parents experienced is passed on to subsequent generations as transgenerational trauma. Making the history of violence and injustice so visible was an important part of the work. The costumes and the ‘thing’ were transformed, even beyond words, into something that connected and united us. Some of our questions were: What does Tertele mean to you? How would you describe or define it? How do you feel when you talk about it? What makes you think of Tertele? Do you talk about it with people who are not part of your community? How do you feel it in your body when you talk about it? What is ignored? If you were to hold Tertele in your hands, where would you put it down? How would you carry it? What kind of place can Tertele be held in? Open or closed? Private or public? What would you like to say to people who don't know Tertele? Who would not understand your feelings for Tertele?

Through our discussions, it became clear to us that the debate surrounding the approval process for the Tertele monument in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district had been causing divisions for several years. We were aware that we were entering a long-standing discussion and would leave it again elsewhere. This shaped our attitude from the outset, whilst we took the issues, encounters and our actions very seriously.

In 2015, the Dersim Cultural Community Association submitted an application to the BVV to erect a memorial in Berlin-Kreuzberg to commemorate the victims of the mass executions in Dersim in 1937/38 and to raise the visibility of the Dersim community. Today, around 200,000 Zaza Alevis live in Berlin. Since the massacre is not recognised in Turkey, becoming visible is particularly important. In March 2019, the BVV Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg decided that the district office would be commissioned to provide the Dersim Community Association with a location for the erection of a memorial, but conflicts arose that highlighted different historical narratives. The Berlin branch of the Vatan Party even considered the project a ‘threat to coexistence’.

At the same time, there is a clear need for a post-national and post-migrant perspective on the culture of remembrance. Every nation constructs a history that is considered universally valid, anchored in the education system and visible in symbols. But these narratives are selective. How can we deal with the ‘other’ history, the one that is more likely to be passed down orally, visible in songs and stories, and marginalised by the history of the ‘nation’? How can we listen to the people who have been traumatised and ignored, even blamed, by ‘history’? How can we help heal the pain of others and support their right to exist and participate? We discussed at length how each individual deals with the legacy of a ‘violent past’. One woman said, ‘Tertele is a wound within us. A painful wound. Even if a thousand years pass, this feeling will remain. It is a wound within us.’ And another woman warned, ‘We must keep the issue alive, we must not forget it, and we must pass it on to our children so that they know their history. If we do not know our own history, we cannot see our future either.’

To conclude the project, we held a colloquium at the FHXB Museum from 2 to 5 December 2022. The aim of this colloquium was to initiate a dialogue between the various interest groups and the neighbourhood. The programme consisted of speeches by members of the Dersim community, keynotes by various artists and subsequent two-day workshops.

With three artistic-practical workshops, we wanted to invite people from a wide variety of backgrounds in Kreuzberg to shape remembrance work themselves with their own perspectives. Above all, the older and younger generations of Dersimers were to be brought into contact with artists in order to jointly develop initial ideas for a possible memorial and to experience how diverse the culture of remembrance in public space can be.

In the workshop ‘zusammen:finden’ (finding together) by the artist duo Various & Gould, the collage method was used to develop ideas on how and where a memorial could be designed, and these were then translated into posters. In the second workshop, ‘We are here, we are the memorial!’ with artist Raisa Galofre, we staged a possible memorial with our bodies. We explored body language, gestures and composition and, as participants, became part of the memorial ourselves.

In the third workshop, ‘Geographical Traumatic Intimacy,’ with artist Ezgi Kılınçaslan, her documentary film, which was made between 2008 and 2016 as part of an oral history project with the Armenian diaspora in Paris and Beirut, served as the starting point. The participants' stories, photographs and objects gave rise to reactions and connections to the film. We concluded the colloquium with a plenary session in which the workshop groups shared their experiences and results with each other. Being part of such a memorial project enabled us to develop tools for thinking together about sensitive, fragile and elusive topics. We particularly appreciated the hospitality of the community and the members of the Dersim Association, as well as their sincere openness in expressing themselves. At the same time, we also asked ourselves: How would the project have developed if it had been realised by two artists from the Dersim community itself? What alternative paths and possibilities would this have created?

At the end of the project, we wanted to use the video work we created together with the artist Raisa Galofre to share at least some of the content and approaches of this project and at the same time open it up for discussion. This video was completed for the opening of the Tertele memorial.

On 4 May 2025, the 88th anniversary of the Dersim Tertele, the Tertele Memorial, designed by artist Ezgi Kılınçaslan and erected on Blücherplatz in close consultation with the community, was unveiled in a solemn ceremony.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in or contributed to the performative interviews and colloquium, as well as the artists for their valuable contributions. We would also like to thank the institutions that supported us, in particular Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Museum FHXB, Dersim Kulturgemeinde e.V., AKEBİ e. V. Berlin and Alevitische Gemeinde zu Berlin e. V. The project was funded by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg District Cultural Promotion Fund and the Cultural Education Fund.