The Koçgiri tribe (; ) is a collection or confederation of
Kurdish Alevi tribes,
of mainly from
Sivas Province (and also
Erzincan Province), in
Turkey. They are mostly speakers of a dialect of
Kurmanji, some of them also speak
Zaza
Zaza may refer to:
Ethnic group
* Zazas, a group of people in eastern Anatolia (southeastern Turkey)
* Zaza–Gorani languages, Indo-Iranian languages
** Zaza language, spoken by the Zazas
People Given name
* Zaza Sor. Aree (born 1993), Thai k ...
.
Etymology
The origin of the name ''Koçgiri'' is disputed, there are two main opposing points of view:
* ''Qoçgirî'' may originally mean «Great migration» in the Kurdish language, ''qoç'' (migration) being itself a loanword from a Turkic language,
* It may be a Turkic tribal name, the first part of the name ''koç'' meaning "ram".
The early form of ''koç'' in Turkish (''koçkar'' or ''qoçqar'', ''qočuŋar'' in Old Turkic), seems alike to ''Koçkiri'' which is the old spelling of the tribe's name.
History
Some scholars state that they may be, at least partly, of
Turkic
Turkic may refer to:
* anything related to the country of Turkey
* Turkic languages, a language family of at least thirty-five documented languages
** Turkic alphabets (disambiguation)
** Turkish language, the most widely spoken Turkic language
* ...
ancestry.
Some of them describe themselves as ethnic Turks that has been Kurdified.
Ottoman tax records in the 1360-1370's mention the name of Koçgiri, indicating that a so named region or tribe paid their taxes to the Ottomans.
[KOÇGİRİ OLAYI, https://muhaz.org/ismail-arabaci-kimdir.html?page=50, 16/11/1999]
They are known to have initiated the
Koçgiri rebellion that occurred in March 1921, during the
Turkish War of Independence. About 5,000 rebels, including
Sunni
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
tribes having joined the uprising later, fought against the
Grand National Assembly Great National Assembly or Grand National Assembly may refer to:
* Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia, an assembly of Romanian delegates that declared the unification of Transylvania and Romania
* Great National Assembly (Socialist Republic of R ...
. They were defeated on 17 June.
References
Sources
*
*{{cite journal , last=Güneş , first=Ergin , year=2014 , editor-last=Boztuğ , editor-first=Onursal , title=Koçgiri İsyanı Ekseninde Dersim Direnişi , journal= , language=tr , publisher=Tunceli University , pages=244
Alevis
Kurds in Turkey
Kurdish tribes