police in the summer of 1993 on suspicion of aiding the PKK; Saki Işıkçı was deputy mayor at this time. On 29 October 2019, Mehmet Zırığ, HDP co-mayor of Cizre, who was elected in the 2019 Turkish local elections with 77% of the vote, was removed from office by the Governor of Şırnak amidst an investigation into charges of "praising the crime and the criminal", "propagandising for a terrorist organisation", and "being a member of a terrorist organisation", and kaymakam (district governor) Davut Sinanoğlu was appointed as acting mayor. Berivan Kutlu, HDP co-mayor of Cizre, was detained by police on 12–19 March 2020. Demography Population Until 1915, Cizre had a diverse population of Christian Armenians and Assyrians, who constituted half of the city's population, Jews, and Muslim Kurds. The genocide of Armenians and Assyrians reduced the city's population significantly, and it declined further with the departure of the Jews in 1950–1951. The population began to recover in the second half of the 20th century, and later increased dramatically from 1984 onwards due to the Kurdish–Turkish conflict as thousands of people fled to Cizre to escape pressure from both the Turkish armed forces and PKK militants. Religion Christian population According to the census carried out by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, 4281 Armenians inhabited the kaza of Jazirat Ibn ʿUmar in 1913, with only one functioning church: 2716 Armenians lived in Jazirat Ibn ʿUmar itself and eleven nearby villages, and 1565 Armenians were nomadic. 60 Chaldean Catholic families inhabited the city in 1850, and were served by one church and one priest. There were 300 Chaldeans in 1865, 240 Chaldeans in 1880, 320 Chaldeans in 1888, 350 Chaldeans in 1890, and 600 Chaldeans, with 2 priests and 2 churches, in 1913. A report submitted to the Paris Peace Conference by the Syriac Orthodox bishop Severios Barsoum in July 1919 testified that 7510 Syriac Orthodox Christians in 994 families and 8 clergymen had been killed in the kaza of Jazirat Ibn ʿUmar during the genocide. 26 Syriac Orthodox villages and 13 churches had been affected. In total, 35 Assyrian villages in the vicinity of Cizre were destroyed in the genocide. A separate memorandum was submitted on behalf of Shimun XX Paulos, Patriarch of the Church of the East, in which it was requested that the city become part of an independent Assyrian state. After the genocide, in 1918, it was reported Kurds