Mardin Province (Turkish: Mardin ili, Arabic: محافظة ماردين) is a province of Turkey with a population of 744,606.[2] The population was 835,173 in 2000.[3] The capital of the Mardin Province is Mardin Classical Syriac: ܡܶܪܕܺܝܢ Mardin in related Semitic language Arabic: ماردين, Mardīn). Located near the traditional boundary of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, it has a diverse population, composed by Kurdish,Arab and Assyrian/Syriac people.Mardin comes from the Syriac word (ܡܪܕܐ) and means fortresses.[4][5]The local Assyrians/Syriacs, while very reduced due to the massacres of the Assyrian Genocide, hold on to two of the oldest monasteries in the world,[citation needed] Dayro d-Mor Hananyo (Turkish Deyrülzafaran, English Saffron Monastery) and Deyrulumur Monastery. The Christian community is concentrated on the Tur Abdin plateau and in the town of Midyat, with a smaller community (approximately 100) in the provincial capital.Politically, the area in the early 2000s has witnessed competition between the governing Justice and Development Party and the mainly Kurdish-based Democratic Peoples Party, later revamped as Peace and Democracy Party.[6]Unemployment and poverty are serious problems, and there has been considerable out migration to western and southern Turkey, although the reduction in political violence (mainly related to the PKK-led insurgency), coupled with infrastructure improvements such as a new civil airport at the provincial capital and improvements to the Ankara-Baghdad highway are helping ameliorate matters.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 22:29:19 +0000
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