Mardin Province Website Links For
Mardin
 

Information About

Mardin Province




, second city of the province]]

Mardin Province is a province of Turkey with a population of 835,173 (2000)¹. The capital of the Mardin Province is Mardin . Located near the traditional boundary of Anatolia and Mesopotamia , it has a diverse population with a Kurdish majority and significant minorities of Arabs , Syriacs and Turks .

The local Syriac Christian community, while much reduced, supports two of the oldest monasteries in the world, Dayro D-Mor Hananyo (Turkish ''Deyrülzafaran'', English ''Saffron Monastery'') and Dayro D-Mor Gabriel . 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 is competitive between the governing moderate- Islamist Justice And Development Party and Kurdish nationalist Democratic People's Party , and the True Path Party has some strength, especially in rural parts of the province.&2 The area was the scene of bitter fighting between the Turkish Army and the Kurdistan Workers' Party for much of the 1970s and 1980s .

Unemployment and poverty are serious problems, and there has been considerable out migration to western and southern Turkey, although the reduction in political violence, 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.

Mardin is an Aramaic word (ܡܶܪܕܺܝܢ) and means "fortresses".


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