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Zilan Valley Region

The Zilan Valley region has been the center of ten massacres against the Kurds.

Ahmad from Hassan Avdal village answered our questions about the introduction of the Zilan Valley. Sometimes with a short cry, sometimes with a few tears on his face, continues.

Then he would speak and say:

Zilan Valley is a district of the Ardish region of Wan. It is about 20 kilometers from Ardish. There the valley is divided into three parts. That is, there are three valleys, all of which are called the Zilan Valley.

The valley is parallel until it reaches near Tandurak and reaches the area of Diyadin, which belongs to Agri. One reaches Khamur in the Agri region, and the other reaches Patnos in the Agri region. The landscape of the valley is beautiful; it is full of beaches, rivers, and springs. The sound of the river in the valley gives people more pleasure. The resorts of Zilan Valley are like a paradise for the people of the region. The three branches of the Zilan valley coming from the north meet at the south. There are rivers in all three branches of the valley, and on their banks, there are many springs that flow into the rivers and intensify them.

The name of a river is Hassan Avdal River.

The name of another river is the Khanian Valley River.

Another river is called the Ashiran River.

The three rivers are also called the rivers of the Zilan Valley. However, the river with the most water is the Hassan Avdal River. The waters of the three rivers meet in the south and flow into the Wan Sea.

Although this "sea" is also a lake, no one in the area calls it Wan Lake. The state has built a dam there. The dam is mainly used to generate electricity, but some development has been built in the past and farming is also done there. Before the Zilan Valley massacre, Turkey evacuated and besieged many parts of the Zilan Valley and expelled the Kurds from those areas. According to some sources, there were 49 villages in the Zilan Valley. All these villages belong to the Kurds. But the leader "Junta" on June 12, 1980, brought a lot of people from Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan and settled them there.

They built a very large village for these people, built shelters under their houses, gave each house several cows, sheep, and goats, and gave every three or four houses a tractor. They were given the most valuable Kurdish land and fields. Some of these people were settled in some Kurdish villages in the Zilan Valley. After these people were settled in the Zilan Valley, they had no contact with the Kurds. For this reason, they did not even learn Kurdish.

Part of the book "Ten Massacres in Three Tribes of Zilan", Zainal Abedin Zinar, Kurmanji Kurdish, Farhangi Kurdi Publishing House, Sweden/ Stockholm, 2023

To be continued...