Hertevin
Hartevin, also known by other names, is a village in the Pervari District of Siirt, in Turkey. Once populated by Armenians and Assyrians, today the village is mostly Kurdish. Located in a region that was densely populated by Armenians before 1915, the village represents the effects of the Armenian genocide in the twentieth century. Before the forced departure of the Assyrians in the twentieth century, it was one of the last Assyrian villages, out of a total of nine, in the country. Name. The most common spellings for the name of the village are Hartevin, Hertevin, and Ardvan (in  , en , in , et en ) There is no single correct spelling for the name of the village. Spellings used by sources include "Artuvin", "Hartiv", "Artevna", "Hertevina", "Hertvin", "Hertivin", "Hertivinler" and "Ertevın". Other Armenian sources call it "Artoun", "Ertun" or "Arton". In 1920, a source called it "Hartevin", while another source from 1928 called it "Hertvin". In Armenian, the village is called "Artvan", "Ardvan" or "Ardvinan" (en ), based on a source from 1912. Location. The village is located on a mountainous plateau, in the Turkish region of Southeast Anatolia. It is 30 km west of Pervari, 60 km southwest of Lake Van , 70 km north of the Iranian border, and 68 km north of the Syrian border. The village is split in two parts, with the main upper village located further north, and a lower village called "Rabanokan" or "Rabanok", located further south. The name Rabanok (en , et en ) means "pastor" in Aramaic. History. Ancient history. The Assyrian king Sennacherib conquered the region in 697 BC, then in the hands of the Urartians. Assyrian and Armenian era. There were four Chaldean Catholic churches in the village, including that of Mar Ishak (Saint Isaac) and Mar Giorgis (Saint George). The churches were part  of the diocese of Siirt (in ) until 1915. In the village of Rabanokan, there was an Armenian Church, known as Surp Asdvadzadzin (en , in English "Saint Mother of God"), also called Surp Sargis (en , in English "Saint Serge"). During the Ottoman era, the villagers of Hartevin were Rayats of the principality of Bhotan under the authority of the local Kurdish agha, which was somewhat independent of the central government in Constantinople because of the isolation and mountainous nature of the region. The agha owed the residents protection in exchange for the half of the products of their labor. Administratively, the  village was in the Sanjak of Siirt in the ancient province of Bitlis Vilayet. Hartevin was surrounded by many Kurdish villages. Many of these villages had been of Assyrian or Armenian origins and were replaced by Kurdish populations after massacres, and in many cases, the names were changed. The population suffered under the Hamidian massacres committed against Christians in 1895. In 1909, Rabanok was population by 20 Armenian families. In 1915, Hartevin had a population of 200, in addition to five Armenian families of 45 people in Rabanok, but the village was destroyed during the Armenian Genocide. The Chaldean bishop  of the village was assassinated, and the Venezuelan soldier Rafael de Nogales Méndez witnessed the extermination of tens of thousands of Armenians around Siirt. The fall of 1928 saw the final expulsion of the remaining Armenians to Syria. Since then, the village has been populated entirely by Kurds, with no more Armenians remaining. Hartevin was officially names "Ekindüzü" in 1958 as part of Turkey's Turkification policy. Inn the 1970s, the government built public schools in rural communities such as Hertevin, and it was not until this time that local residents began to learn Turkish, as opposed to the traditional  Aramaic or the local Kurdish languages. With a population of 500 in the 1970s, the population of Hertevin and other Assyrian villages left Turkey from the 1970s into the 1990s, due to violence and discrimination in the region. In 1982, three Christian families remained in the village. Today, most of these people live in the Paris region, mostly in Seine-Saint-Denis, and mainly in Clichy-sous-Bois.), with smaller numbers in Germany and Sweden. No Chaldeans remain in the village. Kurdish era. At the end of 1994, the village was attacked and partially destroyed by the Turkish army (it  was one of 6,000 villages destroyed in the 1990s), in its conflict against the PKK, which continues to result in violence in the region. In 2011, a textilte factory opened in the village, employing 150 people. Today, the village has a health center and a primary school. In 2017, there was only a single family remaining who speaks the Hertevin dialect of Aramaic. Population and culture. Language. In addition to the Mouch dialect of Armenian that was spoken before the 1930s, and the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish spoken by most residents today, Hertevin was known for its Soureth dialect that  was different from other dialects in the region., which was also spoken until the departure of the Chaldeans in nearby villages, known in Turkish as "Hertevince" (ISO 639-3 : ). This dialect was the main languages of the village until the 1960s. In the west, it was first discovered by German linguist Otto Jastrow in 1970, who studied it and described it in detail in 1972. Hertevin's dialect, although belong to Eastern Neo-Aramaic, shares many similarities to the Turoyo dialect of Central Neo-Aramaic, as well as the Soureth dialect of Bohtan (spoken in Gardabani in Georgia (country) which  originates from Eastern Neo-Aramaic). In 1999, the dialect has 1,000 speakers throughout the world. Economy. The residents of Hertevin were known primarily for agriculture (melons, watermelons and figs), breeders (cows), beekeepers, wine growers, shepherds (sheeps and goates) or artisans (mainly weavers, potters, and metalworkers).