Ovacık (, ,) is a municipality (

belde Belde (literally "town", also known as ''kasaba'') means "large village with a municipality" in Turkish language, Turkish. All Turkish province centers and district centers have municipalities, but the Villages of Turkey, villages are usually too ...

) and seat of the Ovacık District in

Tunceli Province Tunceli Province (), formerly Dersim Province (; ; ), is a province in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Its central city is Tunceli. The province has a Kurdish majority. Moreover, it is the only province in Turkey with an Alevi majority. ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. It is populated by Alevi Kurds of the Abasan tribe and had a population of 3,018 in 2021.

Etymology

Its name is derived from a small plain between the Munzur and Mercan mountains (ova meaning plain).

Politics

It was the only town to elect a

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

mayor in

2014 Turkish local elections Local elections (formal: local authority general elections, Turkish: ''Mahalli İdareler Genel Seçimi'' or simply ''Yerel Seçimleri'') were held in Turkey on 30 March 2014, with some repeated on 1 June 2014. Metropolitan and district mayors as ...

, Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu, member of the Communist Party of Turkey. He made public transport free of charge and in 2017 he opened a municipal agricultural cooperative that produced chickpeas, beans, and honey and according to Maçoğlu gave work to 250 people. In the Municipal elections of 2019 Mustafa Sarıgül from the CHP was elected mayor.

References

Populated places in Ovacık District, Tunceli District municipalities in Turkey Turkish Kurdistan Kurdish settlements in Tunceli Province {{Tunceli-geo-stub