Origins and industrialization The history of the modern province is inextricably linked to the discovery of oil. Prior to the 1940s, the site of the provincial capital was a small village known as Iluh. The search for oil in the region began in 1935, culminating on 20 April 1940, when oil was discovered at a depth of 1048 meters at the
Raman oil field. Commercial production began in 1947, followed by the construction of a refinery in 1948. By 1955, the facility's capacity was expanded to 330 tonnes per day. This rapid industrialization transformed the village of Iluh into the booming urban center of Batman, attracting significant migration and altering the region's social fabric.
Recent history From July 1987 to October 1997, the region was included in the
OHAL state of emergency zone, established to combat the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgency. During the 1990s, Batman became a focal point of the
Kurdish–Turkish conflict. The province experienced a wave of political violence, including hundreds of killings by "unidentified gunmen" (
faili meçhul), many of which were attributed to the conflict between the PKK and the
Kurdish Hezbollah. Batman was widely reported to be a stronghold for the Kurdish Hezbollah, a
Sunni Islamist organization that utilized the province for recruitment and training during this period. == Geography ==