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Bingöl

Bingöl (Armenian: Ճապաղջուր, romanizedChapaghjur; Kurdish: Çewlik; Zazaki: Çewlîg), known as Çapakçur before 1944, is a city in Turkey. It is the seat of Bingöl Province and Bingöl District, and has a population of 133,423 (2022).

One of the historical names for the city, Bingöl literally means thousand lakes in Turkish; however, there are no lakes of considerable size within the boundaries of the province. The name rather refers to many tarns found around the city.

Bingöl is located in what was historically the region of Sophene (first an independent kingdom and later an Armenian and Roman province). The settlement is mentioned by its Armenian name, Chapaghjur (meaning "spread out water" in Armenian), by the 11th-century Armenian historian Stepanos Asoghik, who mentions it while describing the 995 Balu earthquake. Chapaghjur is sometimes identified with the Roman fortress-town of Citharizum (Ktarich in Armenian).

In the Middle Ages, Bingöl was known as Romanoupolis (Greek: Ῥωμανούπολις) after the Byzantine emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, who incorporated it into the Byzantine Empire in 942. It initially formed a subdivision of the thema of Mesopotamia, but it was later (c. 970) elevated into a separate theme.

Bingöl was ruled by the Suwaydid dynasty, a cadet branch of the Barmakids, from the 13th century until mid-Ottoman rule, autonomously from the Ottomans. Bingöl and the surrounding district had a large Armenian population prior to the Armenian genocide. Until the middle of the 20th century, the city was known as Çapakçur/Çabakçur, derived from its Armenian name. In 1944, the place was renamed Bingöl, meaning "thousand lakes" in Turkish.

Bingöl has been the site of several violent incidents of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. On 23 October 2016, a car bombing targeting an armored police vehicle perpetrated by PKK militia members killed two police officers and injured 19 others. On 8 June 2018, a group of PKK militia members attacked a military station and killed one Turkish soldier while injuring three others.

Bingöl is 144 kilometres (89 mi) east of Elazığ and is situated in the high region of Eastern Anatolia. Bingöl is a mountainous area with heights reaching 3000 m, Bingöl city is at about 1120 m above sea level. The Gayt River (Gayt Çayı), a right-bank tributary of the Eastern Euphrates (Murat River), runs through the city.

Bingöl has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dsa, or Trewartha climate classification Dca), with hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters. The driest months are July and August and the wettest is February and December.

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