A village. A people. A silence that lasted decades. In the mountains of eastern Anatolia, where the rivers run deep and the peaks touch the clouds, the Kurdish and Zaza Alevi people of Dersim have lived by their own laws for a thousand years. The mountains are their home. The mountains are their protection. But in 1937, the mountains are not enough.
 
Blood of the Mountains follows Leyla, a young woman from the mountain village of Zarif, as the Turkish Republic's campaign to "pacify" the region tears apart everything she has ever known. When the government sends its inspectors, then its soldiers, then its aircraft, Leyla and her family must make impossible choices — resist or submit, stay or flee, remember or survive. Set against the true story of the Dersim massacre — one of the twentieth century's most forgotten atrocities — this is a novel about the courage of ordinary people caught in the machinery of history. It is the story of Seyid Riza, the real tribal elder who went to Ankara seeking justice and was hanged for it.
 
It is the story of a people erased from the map. And it is the story of a woman who refused to let them be forgotten. Based on documented events and declassified Turkish state archives. Includes a full Historical Afterword. In 2011, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan publicly apologised for the Dersim massacre.
 
Published by Kurdish-History.com | Digital download — PDF format