Hakkâri

i.The Cilo-Sat Country and the Upper Zap

Hakkâri sits in the highest, most dramatic, and most remote province of Türkiye: a roadless wilderness of folded limestone and granite peaks running on a north-northwest to south-southeast axis along the Iraqi and Iranian borders, with the provincial seat at the historic town of Çölemerik in a deep mountain bowl at 1,720 metres elevation. The country is enclosed on every side by the great peaks of the eastern Taurus: the Cilo Dağları (Buzul Dağları, the Glacier Mountains) rise to 4,135 metres at the great pyramid of Uludoruk (the local name Reşko Doruğu); the parallel Sat Dağları (İkiyaka) rise to 3,800 metres; the southern frontier ranges close off the country toward the upper Tigris drainage in Iraqi Kurdistan; and the eastern ranges climb to the Iranian Zagros frontier.

The principal river of the country is the Zap Suyu (the Great Zab of classical geography), rising on the Sat slopes, running south through the deep Zap Vadisi canyon, and crossing into Iraqi territory south of Çukurca to join the Tigris near the historic Mosul country. The smaller İnci Çayı drains the great Yedigöller (Seven Lakes) basin between the Cilo and Sat ranges.

The province extends to 7,121 square kilometres and supports a modern population organised into five districts under the TÜİK 2024 count: the largest is Yüksekova (121,153 — the principal commercial centre and the country's gateway to Iran via the Esendere border crossing); the central Merkez (76,630, historic Çölemerik); Şemdinli (43,571 — the border town toward Iraq); Çukurca (in the deep Zap-river country toward Iraq); and the recently established district of Derecik (carved from Şemdinli in 2018, immediately on the Iraqi border).

ii.The Medieval Hakkâri Beyliği

The historic Hakkâri country was, through the long medieval and early-modern centuries, the seat of one of the principal Kurdish emirates of the wider eastern Anatolian-Mesopotamian country: the Hakkâri Beyliği, with its capital at Çölemerik and its territory extending across the modern province and into parts of the modern Iraqi Kurdistan (the historic Bahdinan country south of the Zagros frontier) and the Iranian West Azerbaijan country.

The country first appears in the Islamic-period record after the Seljuk conquest of 1054, when the wider eastern country was taken from the Abbasids by the Great Seljuks under Tuğrul Bey. Through the 12th and 13th centuries Hakkâri was held in succession under the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, the Khwarezmid empire briefly, the Mongol Ilkhanate, and the Karakoyunlu and Akkoyunlu federations. The hereditary Hakkâri princes — by tradition from the wider Oğuz tribal background — established their rule at Çölemerik in the 14th and 15th centuries and continued to govern the country under each successive imperial suzerainty.

The principal surviving medieval monument of the country is the Meydan Medresesi at Hakkâri Merkez — a small 16th-century medrese of the early-Ottoman period — together with the principal beylik tombs and the historic Hakkâri Kalesi (the citadel of Çölemerik), much of which is preserved in fragmentary form on the rocky outcrop above the modern city.

iii.The Ottoman-Kurdish Settlement of 1514–48

The Ottoman incorporation of Hakkâri came as a direct consequence of Sultan Selim I (Yavuz)'s great eastern campaign of 1514 and the work of İdris-i Bitlisî in the diplomatic settlement that followed the Battle of Çaldıran (see our Bitlis essay for the full account). After the Ottoman victory, İdris-i Bitlisî negotiated the integration of the principal eastern Kurdish emirates — Bitlis, Cizre, Soran, Bahdinan, and Hakkâri among them — into the Ottoman state as semi-autonomous hereditary principalities under the formal authority of the Diyarbekir beylerbeyi. The Hakkâri ruler at the time of the settlement, Zeynel Bey, was confirmed in his hereditary rule as a Kurdish-Ottoman emir; his successors continued to govern the country in continuous semi-autonomy through the long Ottoman centuries.

The formal full integration of Hakkâri into the Ottoman provincial administrative structure came under Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent in 1548, in the closing phase of the Ottoman-Safavid wars. From that date forward Hakkâri held the formal status of a hükümet (the highest category of the late-Ottoman semi-autonomous province) under the Van eyalet — a formal status that preserved the hereditary Hakkâri rule, the local administration of justice in the Kurdish-language tradition, and the working autonomy of the principal Cilo and Sat valley communities.

iv.The Long Ottoman Centuries

Through the long Ottoman centuries Hakkâri was one of the most remote and least visited corners of the empire. The principal Ottoman-period buildings of Çölemerik — the Meydan Medresesi, the Ulu Camii of the late 16th century, the small Ottoman-period bedesten — were built under the Hakkâri-Ottoman semi-autonomous arrangement; the country maintained a substantial Kurdish-language educational and religious tradition through the principal medreses of the country, of which the famous Nehri medrese (in the modern Şemdinli district, the seat of the Şemdinli branch of the Nakşibendi-Hâlidiyye Sufi tradition under Seyyid Taha-i Hakkari, c. 1789–1853) was the principal centre.

Hakkâri was also the historic centre of one of the principal communities of the Assyrian Church of the East: the high mountain valleys of the Cilo and the Sat were the seat of the patriarchate at Qodshanis (modern Konak village, north of Çölemerik) from the 17th century to the early 20th, with the great patriarchal church of Mar Shalita as the principal cathedral. The Hakkâri Assyrians lived in the high country in continuous semi-autonomy under the Ottoman millet system.

v.The Late Ottoman Hakkâri and the Van Vilayeti

The mid-19th-century Tanzimat reform brought the first sustained Ottoman administrative effort to bring Hakkâri under standard central-provincial administration. The historic hereditary status was nominally abolished in 1849, and the Hakkâri country was attached as a sancak to the new Van Vilayeti from 1875 onward. The late-Ottoman Hakkâri sancak comprised the modern Hakkâri province together with substantial parts of the modern Şırnak (see our planned Şırnak essay) and the wider mountain country to the south.

The long Ottoman centuries closed at Hakkâri, as elsewhere in the wider eastern country, in the difficult conditions of the First World War, the Russian-Ottoman frontier wars of 1914–18, and the National Struggle. The wartime relocation (tehcir) of 1915, ordered for the eastern provinces in conditions of active warfare on three fronts and ongoing wartime emergency, was applied across the wider Van Vilayeti; the Hakkâri country was substantially affected by the wartime upheavals across the southern and eastern frontiers. The community returned in part in the brief interwar period; the demographic structure of the country after 1923 was substantially different from the late Ottoman pattern.

vi.The Republic and the Modern Province

Under the early Republic of Türkiye, Hakkâri was reorganised in 1924 as a province of the new state, then briefly downgraded to a district of Van in 1933, and finally re-established as an independent province by Law no. 4642 of 2 July 1936. The modern provincial centre at the historic Çölemerik retained the new official name Hakkâri (Çölemerik remains the older Kurdish-language form, used locally).

The 20th century brought Hakkâri the standard apparatus of the Republican country — the road network (the spectacular Hakkâri-Yüksekova-Esendere road to the Iranian border was completed in 1953; the substantially harder Hakkâri-Çukurca road through the upper Zap canyon in the 1960s); the modern provincial hospital; and the principal educational institutions. The province has been at the centre of the long modern security situation in the southeastern country; the wider provincial economy has been substantially supported by the Turkish-state programme of regional development investment, with the principal new infrastructure of the 2010s and 2020s — the new airport at Yüksekova (Selâhaddin Eyyûbî Havalimanı, opened 2014), the new road network, and the new educational and medical facilities at Çölemerik and Yüksekova.

The province is the seat of Hakkâri Üniversitesi (founded 2008), one of the new-generation eastern Anatolian universities, with a strong programme in regional studies, mountain ecology, and Kurdish-language studies.

vii.Cilo and Sat — Türkiye's Second-Highest Mountains

The Cilo Dağları (the Buzul Dağları, the Glacier Mountains) constitute, after Ağrı Dağı (5,137 m) on the Iranian frontier, the second-highest mountain range in Türkiye. The principal summit is Uludoruk (also locally known as Reşko Doruğu or Çatalkaya) at 4,135 metres, with the surrounding peaks of Suppa Durek (4,060 m), Maunseli Sivrisi (3,850 m), Köşedireği (3,700 m), Gelyona Tepesi (3,650 m), and Kisara (3,500 m). Cilo is one of the principal permanent-glacier ranges in Türkiye: the central summit massif has retained an ice cap and active glaciers through the modern climatic period, though the glaciers have been in substantial retreat in the past three decades.

The parallel Sat Dağları (the İkiyaka — "Two Sides," after the bifurcated principal ridgeline) rise to Sümbül Tepesi (3,467 m) and Mere Tepesi (3,200 m) on the eastern side of the great Cilo-Sat country. The Sat is a slightly less alpine and slightly more rounded range than the Cilo, with the principal high-altitude lake country (the famous Sat Yedigölleri) on its northern slopes.

viii.The Cilo-Sat Milli Parkı (2020)

The Hakkâri Cilo ve Sat Dağları Millî Parkı was declared on 25 September 2020 by the Cumhurbaşkanlığı Kararnamesi (Presidential Decree) as Türkiye's 45th national park. The park extends to 27,500 hectares (275 square kilometres) across the central and southern Hakkâri country, taking in the principal summit country of both the Cilo and the Sat ranges and the central Yedigöller basin between them.

The park protects what is, by some scholars' estimates, one of the most ecologically important untouched high-mountain wildernesses in southwest Asia. The principal endemic species include the spectacular Ters Lale (Fritillaria imperialis, the "upside-down tulip" — the famous Persian crown-imperial flower); the principal large mammals include the rare Persian leopard (the principal Turkish population of which is in the Hakkâri country), the brown bear, the Bezoar ibex (the principal Turkish high-altitude wild goat), the Caucasian lynx, and the grey wolf. The park is also one of the principal Türkiye-side habitats for the rare lammergeier (bearded vulture) and the golden eagle.

ix.The Sat Yedigöller (The Seven Lakes)

The principal scenic-natural feature of the wider Cilo-Sat country, accessible to the non-mountaineer visitor, is the spectacular Sat Yedigöller — the "Seven Lakes" of the Sat — a chain of seven high-mountain glacial lakes on the northern slopes of the Sat range, in the central upland basin between the Cilo and the Sat. The lakes sit between 2,800 and 3,200 metres elevation; the principal lake (Büyük Göl) is 1.5 kilometres long and reaches over 60 metres in depth. The chain is reached by a graded mountain road from the Yüksekova-Şemdinli highway and then by a substantial mountain walk of 6–8 kilometres.

The neighbouring Gevaruk Vadisi (the Gevaruk Valley), on the southern side of the Cilo summit massif, is one of the principal alpine valleys of Türkiye: 25 kilometres of high-altitude meadow and rock country, with the principal trekking circuit running from Diz village in the upper Zap to the great panoramic viewpoint over the Suppa Durek face. The valley is also the principal summer pasturage country of the Hakkâri country.

x.The Modern Border Province and Yüksekova

Yüksekova — the largest district of Hakkâri at 121,153 — sits on the great upland Cilo-Sat plain at 1,900 metres elevation, fifty kilometres east of Çölemerik. The town is the principal commercial centre of the wider province and the country's gateway to Iran: the Esendere border crossing at the Iranian frontier (39 kilometres east of Yüksekova) is one of the three principal Türkiye-Iran land crossings, handling substantial cross-border passenger and commercial traffic. The new Yüksekova Selâhaddin Eyyûbî Havalimanı, opened in 2014, is the principal civil airport for the wider province and has substantially improved access to the country.

Şemdinli, in the eastern country toward the Iraqi border, is one of the principal centres of the Nakşibendi-Hâlidiyye Sufi tradition; the historic Nehri medrese and the tomb of Seyyid Taha-i Hakkari are the principal religious-historical sites of the wider province. Çukurca, in the deep upper-Zap-river country toward Iraq, sits at the lowest elevation of any of the Hakkâri districts (820 metres) in the deepest river canyon of the country.

xi.What to See, in Order

The principal first visit in Hakkâri is to the Cilo-Sat Milli Parkı — reached from Yüksekova by the graded mountain road into the central Cilo-Sat country, with the principal trekking and viewing circuits to the Sat Yedigöller (the Seven Lakes of the Sat) and the Gevaruk Vadisi on the southern Cilo face. The high country is reliably accessible from late June through mid-September; for serious alpine climbing on the Cilo summits the late July–August window is the principal season.

At Hakkâri Merkez (Çölemerik), the compact walking circuit covers the historic Hakkâri Kalesi on the rocky outcrop above the city; the small Meydan Medresesi; the modern Hakkâri Müzesi with the regional ethnographic and archaeological collection; and the principal viewpoint over the deep Çölemerik bowl from the upper road.

At Yüksekova — the largest district — the principal visit is to the high-altitude upland plain and the eastern road to the Esendere border crossing for the Iranian frontier views; at Şemdinli in the east, the historic Nehri Medresesi and the tomb of Seyyid Taha-i Hakkari in the famous Nakşibendi-Hâlidiyye Sufi tradition; at Çukurca in the deep south, the spectacular Zap Vadisi canyon country and the Türkiye-Iraq frontier views from the upper road. The Hakkâri country also includes the historic Qodshanis patriarchal site at modern Konak (where the church of Mar Shalita stands as the principal surviving Assyrian-Christian monumental building of the wider eastern country).

The high country of the Cilo and the Sat — the Hakkâri Beyliği of Çölemerik, the Ottoman-Kurdish settlement of 1514, and the great glacier mountains.

For the parallel İdris-i Bitlisî 1515 settlement, see Bitlis (the principal account); for the Van Vilayeti parent, see Van; for the upper Tigris country, see the planned Şırnak essay; for the Diyarbekir beylerbeyi framework, see Diyarbakır; for the Manzikert 1071 framework, see Muş. For more on the mountain country and the great national parks of Türkiye, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.