Batman
Oil discovered April 20, 1940 transformed a Kurdish village of 3,000 into a city of 654,000. Turkey's oldest refinery processes 1.1M tonnes annually. The DEM Party mayor was replaced by a government trustee in November 2024, sparking protests.
Batman is an oil boomtown that exploded from 3,000 people in the 1950s to 654,000 today—a transformation triggered by the April 20, 1940 discovery of oil at Raman field that created Turkey's oldest refinery and reshaped a remote Kurdish village into a politically contested metropolis.
Before 1940, the site of modern Batman was a small village called Iluh near the confluence of the Batman River with the Tigris. The search for oil began in 1935, and on April 20, 1940, drillers struck crude at 1,048 meters depth in the Raman field. Commercial production started in 1947; a refinery opened in 1948. By 1955, processing capacity reached 330 tonnes daily. A 511-kilometer pipeline connected Batman to the Mediterranean port of Dörtyol in 1967. The village of Iluh had become an industrial city.
Modern Batman Province formed in 1990, when the city gained provincial capital status. Tüpraş now operates the refinery with 1.1 million tonnes annual capacity. Proven reserves in Batman and adjacent southeastern fields totaled approximately 371 million barrels as of January 2023, with production exceeding 20,000 barrels daily. Beyond oil, the economy produces beverages, processed food, chemicals, furniture, footwear, and machinery.
But oil wealth intersects with ethnic politics. Batman is predominantly Kurdish; the city has hosted Turkey's first Kurdish film festival (2010) and remains a stronghold of Kurdish political movements. In the March 2024 local elections, DEM Party candidate Gülistan Sönük won the mayorship with 47.14% of votes. On November 4, 2024, a court upheld her prior conviction for alleged PKK links, leading to dismissal and replacement by a government-appointed trustee. Protests and riots followed across Kurdish-majority towns.
The population grew from 480,000 urban residents to 654,528 provincial population by 2024—84% now living in the city. This is Turkey's most oil-dependent economy, its most politically contested Kurdish city, and a case study in how resource extraction transforms demographics.
By 2026, Batman will continue producing oil while its political status remains unstable—elected mayors replaced by trustees, protests contained by security forces, and oil revenues flowing to Ankara.