Siirt

Siirt is a city in the Siirt District of Siirt Province in Turkey, and it had a population of 160,340 in 2021. The city is predominantly inhabited by Kurds, with a significant Arab community, and its name appears as Sert in Kurdish, Si'ird in Arabic and Sgerd in Armenian. In pre-Islamic times, when it was known as Saird, it was a diocese of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and from 1858 to 1915 it was the seat of a bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church. In the medieval period Arzen and Hasankeyf were the main centres of the region, and Siirt became a regional centre only in the 14th century. Today the city is divided into about twenty neighbourhoods, among them Alan, Algul and Yeni, and it has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate with dry summers and wet winters.