New Archive Document on Dersim Massacre, Declassified in 2020, Comes to Light
RastinewsA new archival document has been added to the debate over the use of poison gas during the Dersim Massacre.
The document, dated Aug. 20, 1938, was published by Dersim Gazetesi, which made it public for the first time. It points to Kiel-based firm Hagenuk as the supplier of a "complete automatic gas-filling system" that Turkey had decided to purchase from Germany in 1937.
The document states that the system "would be purchased from the Hagenuk firm in Kiel" and that payment would be made through the clearing method used in trade between Germany and Turkey.
The report, published in Dersim Gazetesi under the bylines of Mahsuni Gül and Nesimi Aday, notes that the document's classification was lifted by a decision dated Nov. 20, 2020.
1937 decision authorized gas and filling system
Earlier documents show that Turkey made a formal decision in 1937 to purchase chemical warfare agents from Germany, along with an automatic system for filling them into bombs.
A Council of Ministers decision dated Aug. 7, 1937, called for the acquisition of roughly 20 tons of chloroacetophenone, mustard gas (Yperite) and similar agents, along with a "complete automatic filling system" for loading them into bombs, as part of an air-armament program.
The decision specified that the purchase would be made from firms in Germany, with the transaction carried out through the Turkish Embassy in Berlin and paid for via clearing.
Documents published by Dersim Gazetesi in 2019 had traced the gas and military equipment acquired from Germany following that decision. The newly published 1938 document identifies the German firm that went unnamed in the 1937 decision.
What does the document say?
The document, held in the Turkish Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under archive number 501 32137 127587 1, was sent to the Ministry of National Defense.
The Aug. 20, 1938, letter relays information obtained from German authorities via the Berlin Embassy. It states that the gas-filling system would be purchased from the Hagenuk firm in Kiel and paid for through clearing.
The document also calls for "immediate contact" with the German firm.
Researchers, however, have not been able to access the letter dated April 19, 1938, numbered 445/131, on which the document is based. As a result, the new document alone does not offer a definitive answer on how far the purchasing process had advanced.
The record in the archive therefore shows not that "the system was purchased from Hagenuk," but that a decision had been made to purchase it from Hagenuk and that correspondence with German authorities was underway to that end.
Who was Hagenuk?
Hagenuk, named in the document, was the abbreviated name of the Kiel-based company Hanseatische Apparatebau-Gesellschaft Neufeldt und Kuhnke.
Founded in 1899, the company made naval technology, wireless and telephone equipment, radio receivers and various technical instruments. According to company records and German Federal Archive files cited by Dersim Gazetesi, the firm was also involved in production linked to mines, bombs and chemical warfare agents during World War II.
The 1938 document is therefore the first to tie the gas-filling system's likely supplier — previously referred to only as "German firms" — to a specific company and city: Hagenuk, in Kiel.
Prior documentation of poison gas use in Dersim
Accounts and documents concerning the use of poison gas in Dersim are not new.
Nuri Dersimi referenced the use of gas in his 1952 book "Dersim in the History of Kurdistan." İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil, a state official at the time, described in a 1986 interview with Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu how people who had taken refuge in caves were killed using gas.
In 2014, a telegram dated Feb. 19, 1942, released by the Dersim Research Center, revealed then-Prime Minister İbrahim Refik Saydam's assessments regarding the use of gas against civilians in Dersim.
None of these earlier documents, however, offered direct information on the source of the gas or the channel through which it was obtained.
Documents on the German connection surfaced in 2019
More concrete documents on the German origin of the gas were published, again by Dersim Gazetesi, in 2019.
The research, prepared by Mahsuni Gül and Hüsnü Gürbey, made public documents on the 1937 Council of Ministers decision to purchase chemical warfare agents and a system for filling them into bombs from Germany.
Those documents later reached the German Bundestag.
A parliamentary question submitted by Left Party (Die Linke) lawmakers in 2019 raised allegations that German-made chemical weapons had been used in Dersim, along with the broader arms trade between Turkey and Germany. The federal government, in response, said historical and political research should primarily be conducted in Turkey and offered no detailed assessment.
Featured in a 2026 Bundestag report
The debate over the military operations in Dersim also entered a report prepared this year by the German Bundestag's Scientific Service.
The report, dated June 22, 2026, and titled "Military Operations and Resistance in Dersim, 1937/38: A Historical and International Legal Assessment," examines the operations in Dersim from historical and international-law perspectives.
It addresses documents indicating that weapons shipments to Turkey, within the framework of German-Turkish economic relations, included arms and war technology intended for the use of poison gas.
The report notes that Germany's role in the use of chemical weapons in Dersim has, to date, been researched only to a limited extent, because full access to the relevant military archives has not been possible. It cites the documents published in 2019 as a source.
This is where the new document's contribution matters: while the 1937 decision referred only to "firms in Germany," the document dated Aug. 20, 1938, names Hagenuk of Kiel as the supplier of the system. (Serbestiyet)
