Midyat (Syriac: ܡܕܝܕ, romanized: Mëḏyaḏ,[2] Turoyo: Məḏyaḏ, Kurdish: Midyad,[3] Arabic: مديات) is a municipality and district of Mardin Province, Turkey.

The spoken language of Midyat was until recently modern Aramaic (Surayt) and the town has throughout history been considered the capital of the Tur Abdin region, the heartland of Syriac Christianity.

[12] In mid-1915, Assyrian Christians in Midyat considered resistance after hearing about massacres elsewhere, but the local Syriac Orthodox community initially refused to support this.

[14] In late June, kaymakam Nuri Bey disappeared, likely executed by Mehmed Reshid after refusing to massacre local Christian Assyrians.

[16] The town was pacified in early August after weeks of bloody urban warfare which killed hundreds of Christians (Assyrians and Armenians).

During the early 20th century, the Assyrian population of the city started to gradually diminish due to emigration, but the community was still very large.

The Assyrian of Tur Abdin were the only significant population of Christians outside of Istanbul, until 1979, when panic ensued over an act of war and an exodus of local Christians overtook the city as a result, because a mayor and major Assyrian figure in Turabdin of the city of Kerboran, now named Dargecit, was assassinated and replaced with a Kurdish representative against the peoples will.

Panic ensued as the local Muslim population made a symbolic declaration of war against the Assyrian people and soon after the takeover, local Mhallami and Kurdish inhabitants started immigrating into the traditionally Assyrian areas, causing a demographic shift which – along with the start of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict a few years later in 1984 – sounded a death toll to the community not only here, but in all of Tur Abdin.

[31] Twelve of these (Akçakaya, Bağlar, Bahçelievler, Cumhuriyet, Gölcük, Işıklar, Ortaçarşı, Sanayi, Seyitler, Ulucamii, Yenimahalle and Yunus Emre) form the central town (merkez) of Midyat.

[35] Midyat, part of the province of Mardin, has a semi-arid climate with very hot and dry summers and cold, wet, and occasionally snowy winters.