[1] Its adjacent provinces are Bitlis to the west, Siirt to the southwest, Şırnak and Hakkâri to the south, and Ağrı to the north.

[8] The province is mainly populated by Kurds and considered part of Turkish Kurdistan.

[12] In the 1881–1882 Ottoman census, the sanjak of Van had a population of 113,964 of which 52.1% was Armenian and 47.9% Muslim.

It became an important center during the reign of the Armenian king, Tigranes II, who founded the city of Tigranakert in the 1st century BC.

[19] With the victory of the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071, just north of Lake Van,[20] it became a part of the Seljuq Empire and later the Ottoman Empire during their century long wars with their neighboring Iranian Safavid arch rivals, in which Sultan Selim I managed to conquer the area over the latter.

The area continued to be contested and was passed on between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids (and their subsequent successors, the Afsharids and Qajars) for many centuries until the Battle of Chaldiran which set the borders till this day.

In 1927 the office of the Inspector General was created, which governed with martial law.

The UM span over the provinces of Hakkâri, Siirt, Van, Mardin, Bitlis, Sanlıurfa, Elaziğ and Diyarbakır.

[28] On 9 November 2011, a 5.6 Mw magnitude earthquake killed also several people and caused buildings to collapse.

[27] Van Province is divided into 13 districts,[29] listed below with their populations as at the end of 2022.