Tunceli

Tunceli is a municipality (belde) in Tunceli District and capital of Tunceli Province, Turkey. The city has a Kurdish majority and was a site of the Dersim rebellion. It had a population of 35,161 in 2021. Name During Ottoman times, the settlement was called Kalan or Mameki. Tunceli, which is a modern name, literally means "bronze fist" in Turkish (tunç meaning "bronze" and eli, in this context, meaning "fist"). It shares the name with the military operation under which the Dersim massacre was conducted. The province of Dersim (or Dêsim) was renamed Tunceli in 1935, as was the settlement of Kalan, which became the province's administrative center in 1938. Dersim is popularly understood to be composed of the Kurdish/Zazaki words der ("door") and sim ("silver"), thus meaning "silver door." Whether the town should be called Dersim or Tunceli has been a cause of political quarrels. In May 2019, the local authorities decided to call it Dersim, while the governor said it was against the law to call it Dersim. History