Community town · Turkey
Batman Êlih
A province of south-eastern Turkey with historic Yazidi villages, most of whose people emigrated to Europe.
Overview
About Batman
The province of Batman was one of the centres of Yazidi life in south-eastern Turkey, with a cluster of villages in districts such as Beşiri. From the 1980s onward the great majority of Turkey's Yazidis emigrated, chiefly to Germany.
A small number of families have returned or maintained ties to their villages, and there has been intermittent talk of a wider return movement.
This is a community place rather than a primarily religious one. Population and return figures move and are always given with a source and a date rather than stated as fixed.
Locate & verify
Coordinates and external references
Coordinates are approximate and provided for orientation. They should be re-checked against an authoritative gazetteer before any operational use.
Source note
References for this place
This entry is an editorial synthesis of the references below, chosen for the place type. It reproduces no restricted or copyrighted text and should be expanded only after specialist review.
The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion
Bloomsbury, 2014. Anchor reference for Yazidi sacred sites, shrines, architecture, and material culture, including Lalish and the shrines of Sinjar and Sheikhan.
The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan
Routledge, 2001. Reference for place, community, and identity in the Iraqi Yazidi heartland of Sheikhan and Sinjar.
The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq
I.B. Tauris, 1999. Settlement, society, and administration of Sinjar and Sheikhan in the late Ottoman and mandate periods.