In his opening speech to the parliament on November 1, 1936, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk drew attention to the Dersim Question, which he depicted as an abscess in the midst of the motherland pressing for immediate treatment at all cost. This powerful speech however, was not responding to an unusual situation since Dersim was oddly calm these days. Rather, it was the official declaration that despite the calm, as an ethnically non-Turk, religiously non-Sunni, “uncivilized”, and “medieval-like” territory, Dersim by “essence” defied the new Republic that wished to characterize itself as a modern, western-oriented but definitely Turkish civilization. Consequently, Republican officials implemented a disciplinary plan whereby the punishment and acculturation of Dersim were treated as consecutive and interdependent phases, which would begin with the military operation in 1937, continue with the establishment of law, order and schooling in Dersim. In this paper I would like to talk about the Elaz?? Girls’ Institute [EGI], a boarding school for the girls of Dersim, opened in 1937 during the operation. Sidika Avar, a less publicly acknowledged figure served as the principal at EGI between 1939-1957 and assumed several duties that ranged from recruitment of the girls to their cleaning, teaching Turkish to overseeing their chastity. This paper is a study of EGI, S?d?ka Avar and gendered disciplinary schooling policies in Dersim, based on documents from the Prime Ministry’s Republican Archives, official reports, newspapers, journal, oral interviews and memoirs. Thereby, the goal is not simply to illustrate the mindset of exclusively male political elite who turned to forced education of the “rebels’” daughters as a militaristic measure but more importantly highlight the active roles assumed and played by the “heroines” of the nation during this period. I argue that as its archetype, S?d?ka Avar co-opted the premeditated, violence-ridden, disciplinary education policies and transformed them into a single-handedly and affectionately carried out project of maternal colonialism. Sidika Avar, who was informed and inspired by the American-Protestant missionary model, described herself as a Turkish missionary, and devoted her life to be the proper mother to the non-Turk and “savage-like” girls of Dersim, forsaking her responsibilities for own biological daughter. Focusing on the “ work of the women for the nation” this presentation breaks the dichotomy of peaceful, passive, homemaker women/mothers versus violent, state-making, colonialist men, and examines maternal colonization as it unfolds over forcefully removed girls, their biological mothers and the future of the Dersim Question itself.