Kızıltepe ( ku, Qoser, ota, Tell-Ermen, lit=Armenian hill ) is a town and district in Mardin Province of

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. As of 2021, the district had a population of 263,938, making it the most populous district in the province.

Government

In the local elections of March 2019

Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz (born 1962, Mardin, Turkey) is a Turkish politician and a former member of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and Mayor of Kiziltepe for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Education Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz received her ...

was elected as Mayor. But on 15 November 2019 she was dismissed and a trustee was appointed. The current District Governor is Huseyn Cam, who was also appointed as the state appointed trustee.

History

The town has a historic 13th century great Friday mosque built by the

Artuqids The Artuqid dynasty (alternatively Artukid, Ortoqid, or Ortokid; , pl. ; ; ) was a Turkoman dynasty originated from tribe that ruled in eastern Anatolia, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. The Artuqi ...

. On 1 July 1915, during the

1915 genocide in Diyarbekir In 1915, a systematic anti-Christian genocide was committed in Diyarbekir vilayet, claiming the lives of most Armenians as well as Syriac Christians living there. The genocide was ordered by governor Mehmed Reshid, partly with the backing of the C ...

, there was a massacre in the village where its Christian population was murdered by militia and Kurds. About seventy women were raped in the church, then put to death. Men, women, and children were killed indiscriminately and many victims were decapitated. After the massacre, Kurdish women stabbed any survivors to death.

Rafael de Nogales Rafael Inchauspe Méndez, known as Rafael de Nogales Méndez (October 14, 1877 in San Cristóbal, Táchira – July 10, 1937 in Panama City) was a Venezuelan soldier, adventurer and writer who served the Ottoman Empire during the Great War (1914 ...

visited weeks later and found "corpses barely covered with heaps of stone from which emerged here and there a bloody tress or an arm or leg gnawed on by hyenas". In the late 1980s there existed a refugee camp for Kurds who fled persecution by

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

. It was also the scene of clashes between protesting

Kurds ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Ir ...

and Turkish riot police in 2006. In Kiziltepe have been imposed curfews in the past. Kızıltepe, with +48.8 °C (119.84 °F) on August 14, 1993, holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Turkey.

Composition

Notable People

Selma Irmak Selma Irmak (born 8 March 1971, Kızıltepe, Turkey), is a Kurds in Turkey, Kurdish politician from Turkey and former MP for the Peace and Democracy Party (Turkey), Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey), People`s ...

(1971–), Kurdish politician

Notes

Bibliography

* Assyrian communities in Turkey Populated places in Mardin Province Districts of Mardin Province Towns in Turkey Kurdish settlements in Turkey {{Mardin-geo-stub