Hakkari

Hakkari exists because mountains create refugia. The rugged terrain south of Lake Van, bordering both Iran and Iraq, offered defensive positions that made outside control nearly impossible. When Tamerlane persecuted Nestorian Christians in 14th-century Persia, survivors fled to these highlands and became hardy mountaineers organized into semi-autonomous tribes under maliks (chiefs) answering to the patriarch at Qudshanis. By 1886, the ethnic mosaic numbered 70,000 Kurds and 50,000 Assyrian Christians—two peoples who found safety in the same inaccessibility.

The Kurdish Emirate of Hakkari, established by the 1380s under founder Izz al-din Shir, maintained effective autonomy from the 14th century until 1845. Though nominally Ottoman since the 16th century, the region was actually administered by its Assyrian and Kurdish inhabitants. The emirate's fall came through internal disputes that brought it under Botan patronage before Ottoman absorption following the Tanzimat reforms. But even imperial incorporation couldn't overcome geography—the mountains remained ungovernable except by those who lived there.

The 19th and 20th centuries brought systematic violence. Badr Khan of Bohtan attacked Assyrian populations in 1843-46, massacring thousands and taking survivors as slaves. World War I brought genocide: ethnic cleansing began in October 1914 with deportation orders; by September 1915, an estimated 40,000 Assyrians from Hakkari had fled to Urmia in Persia. Final expulsion came in 1924 when the Turkish army drove the last Assyrian settlers back across the Iraqi border. When the League of Nations awarded Hakkari to Turkey in July 1925, return became impossible.

Modern conflict layered Kurdish-Turkish violence onto historical trauma. Since 1984, the PKK insurgency concentrated in provinces like Hakkari, Şırnak, and Diyarbakır. The bloodiest fighting occurred 2015-2017 with urban warfare that killed thousands. By 2017, the battleground shifted to northern Iraq, where Turkey now maintains 2,000-3,000 troops at 40 outposts—some 40 kilometers from the border. Hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish villages remain abandoned due to ongoing operations.

February 2025 brought potential transformation. Abdullah Öcalan called for ending the four-decade conflict. On March 1, 2025, the PKK executive committee declared an immediate ceasefire. By May 2025, the PKK announced intention to disarm and dissolve. In Hakkari's mountains, 50 kilometers from the Iraqi border, Kurdish shepherds are gradually returning with their livestock. Yet after 40 years of conflict—and centuries of violence before that—few in 'the Town of the Tough Faces' believe peace is assured. Hakkari in 2026 tests whether refugia can become homelands again.