Lice (pronounced ), ( ku, Licê, ota, ليجه,) is a

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

-populated town in Diyarbakır Province in

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 ...

. The population was 9,644 in 2010. It is located from the capital,

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır (; ; ; ) is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, ...

. In the local elections in March 2019 Tarık Mercan from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) was elected mayor. As the current District Governor was appointed Cevdet Bakkal.

History

Lice was the headquarters of the 5th Army Corps of the Turkish army during the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925 and it was a focal point at the beginning of the rebellion. The town was captured on the 20 February by the troops loyal to Sheikh Said. The Kurdish Zirki tribe in the Lice district also supported the Sheik Said rebellion and as a reprisal, the tribes villages Çaylarbaşı, Kurlu, Alataş, Mat-bur and Çağlayan have been demolished and the residing population was killed by troops of the Turkish army. It was reported that the troops of the Turkish Major Ali Haydar have wiped out the majority of the Sheikhs. On 6 September 1975, Lice was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7. Around 1.500 people were killed in Lice according to the mayor. The

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...

or PKK, was founded in the village of Fis, in Lice district on November 27, 1978. The

Lice massacre The Lice massacre took place from 20 to 23 October 1993 in the Kurdish town of Lice, Turkey in the Diyarbakır Province of Southeastern Anatolia Region. The Turkish Armed Forces killed at least 30 civilians. Background Tensions between Turkish ...

, during which the Turkish army demolished large parts of the town in reprisal of the death of an

Jandarma The Gendarmerie General Command ( tr, Jandarma Genel Komutanlığı) is the national Gendarmerie force of the Republic of Turkey. It is a service branch of the Turkish Ministry of Interior responsible for the maintenance of the public order in a ...

officer, took place from October 20–23, 1993. Between 2018 and 2019 localities in the Lice district have often been targeted with

curfews A curfew is a government order specifying a time during which certain regulations apply. Typically, curfews order all people affected by them to ''not'' be in public places or on roads within a certain time frame, typically in the evening and ...

declared by the Turkish authorities, which wanted to execute security operations in the district. The Kurdish castle of

Ataq Ataq ( ar, عتق), alternately spelled Attaq, is a small city and the capital of Shabwah Governorate in Yemen. Ataq is 458 km south east of Sanaa. The difference in elevation of the city is about 70 m with generally partially flat topography ...

used to exist near the modern Lice.

References

{{Authority control Populated places in Diyarbakır Province Districts of Diyarbakır Province Kurdish settlements in Turkey