Batman

Elīḥā (today called Batman) was historically inhabited by Syriac Orthodox Christians and Kurdish-speaking Armenians. In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that the village had 1 household, who paid 10 dues, and did not have a church or a priest. There were 15 Armenian hearths in 1880. There was an Armenian church of Surb Astvatsatsin. It was located in the kaza (district) of Beşiri in the Diyarbakır sanjak in the Diyarbekir vilayet in c. 1900. It is tentatively identified with the village of Yliga, which was populated by 100 Syriacs in 1914, according to the list presented to the Paris Peace Conference by the Assyro-Chaldean delegation. The Armenians were attacked by the Belek, Bekran, Şegro, and other Kurdish tribes in May 1915 amidst the Armenian genocide. The village became the capital of a sub-neighbourhood in 1937. …

Batman is built on a flat plateau elevated at 540 m (1,772 ft) above the sea level, though there is a declining slope of up to 0.6° in the northeastern and southern areas. There are almost no forests in and around the city. The Iluh River, a tributary of the Batman River, flows through the city. The soil mostly consists of soft and porous clay; it is unstable and is easily eroded with rain and floods of the Batman and Iluh rivers. The floods usually occur between March and May, although they sometimes occur between October and November. Major floods occurred in 1969 (April, 60 buildings damaged), 1972 (April and May, 210 buildings damaged), 1991 (November, 500 buildings flooded), 1995 (March, nearly 1000 buildings submerged and 450 damaged) and 2006 (October, 11 people died and 20 injured). Batman has a hot summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa, Trewartha: Cs). …

According to the census of 2000, 15% males and 43% females of Batman were categorised as illiterate. Within the literate part, about 33% males and 29% females have not finished secondary school, 3.3% males and 0.9% females had university education, and about 13% males and 3.8% females had completed a high-school or an equivalent program. There are 71 elementary and 12 high schools in Batman. The city also has a university, Batman University, which was founded on 27 May 2007. It employs about 140 staff members and has the faculties of Science and Letters, Technical Education, and Engineering, which mostly cover topics about engineering, business, and administration. About 2,500 students, who come from different parts of Turkey, study at the university. The university is part of the Erasmus foreign student exchange program. Association football is the most popular sport in Batman. …