Vilâyât-ı Sitte

The Sitte (Six Villages) is an administrative-political term referring to six provinces in the east of the Ottoman Empire and referred to in international documents at the end of World War I as the "Six Armenian Provinces" (Volume 3, p. 145). Abdülhamid's reform project known as "Vilayat-ı Sitte İslahati" is recorded in sources; in the opposition press of the period, he encounters critical writings published on the occasion of the death of Shakir Pasha, who was assigned to this project (Volume 4, p. 225). In a cryptographic telegram dated 15 August 1335 (15 August 1919), in which Van Walii Haydar Bey called for internal control, Rumi referred to the works carried out by the British in Shemdinan via Seyit Taha: "Van is the key to the Vilayat-ı Sitte, and the door to Van is the cornerstone of Shemdidan. If Van is in the hands of the enemy, the road to Bitlis and Erzurum is opened, and they all go as far as Sivas as he takes off his socks!" (Volume 3, p. 123). ## In the catalogues of the 1915-1923 period in the Ottoman archives of Mondros and Later, the English document entitled "Conditions of Armistice With Turkey" refers to the mention of Vilayat-i-Sitte as the "Six Armenian Provinces" in Mondros Intermediate negotiations (Cilt 3, p. 145). The same catalogues also contain an English edition to London in which General Harbord stated that he would go to Sitte and Armenia to investigate the Vilayat following Mondros District and that the Turkish side demanded that the term "Six Armenian Provinces" be kept secret (Volume 3, p. 145). ## This collection of documents covers the subject of the Kurdish Historical Research District of Sitte; the impact of the First World War on Kurdistan, Kurdish and Armenian nationalism that was influential in the region, and postwar border disputes; the 1915-1923 catalogues in the archive contain thousands of documents directly concerning the history of Kurdistan and Kurdistan (Volume 3, p. 145).