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

Mardin Province Mardin Province ( tr, Mardin ili; ku, Parêzgeha Mêrdînê; ar, محافظة ماردين) is a province of Turkey with a population of 809,719 in 2017, slightly down from the population of 835,173 in 2000. Kurds form the majority of the popu ...

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

. 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 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. On 1 July 1915, during the 1915 genocide in Diyarbekir, 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 World War I, Gr ...

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 revolutio ...

. 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 Ira ...

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 (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