Researcher and writer.

Born in 1944 in Colemêrg (Hakkâri), he attended primary and secondary school in Hakkâri. In the autumn of 1962, he attended Diyarbakır Training College for Men, which he completed in 1965. In the first year of his teaching career, he taught in Gökler, a borough of Gediz, Kütahya. After his four-month military service in the summer of 1966, he was appointed to Hakkâri at his own request. He taught at the Hakkâri Regional Primary Boarding School until the year of 1969. In the same year, he was appointed as the director of the Hakkâri Public Education Centre. Later on, he was banished to Uşak Province the first political exile in the region. He resigned from his office in protest, returned to Hakkâri and kept working actively with legal associations and engaging in politics. After the military coup d’état in 1980, he was taken into custody three times. He was imprisoned in the Diyarbakır Jail for four months, after which he lived as a fugitive in the region. In the beginning of 90s, he novelized the adventure of the legendary Kurdish love hero Cembelî, the son of the Lord of Hakkâri. This work by him was printed 1995 in Sweden, and in the years of 2001 and 2013 in Istanbul. In the same period, his articles were published in many newspapers. Some of these articles were published in 2006 as a book titled Hakkâri Suretleri (Sümbül Dağı’nda Ayın Doğuşunu İzlerken) (Aspects of Hakkâri (While Watching the Moonrise on the Mountain Sümbül)). At approximately the same time, he completed his work on the history of Zagros-Mesopotamia and Hakkâri, a process which took him nearly ten years. In the same year, it was also published as a book titled Mezopotamya Uygarlığında Hakkâri (Hakkâri During the Mesopotamian Civilization). He has written dozens of articles about politics, literature, history and sociology for the newspaper Azadiya Welat, the internet site Yüksekova Haber, and other media organs. He has also been writing a book in Kurdish about the Urartian Civilization, which is in his opinion the greatest civilization in the vicinity of the Zagros Mountains. This work of his is forthcoming in publication. In the last fifteen years, he has attended many conferences and given speeches, especially in Northern Kurdistan. He has also been interviewed about Kurdish culture on many TV channels. Çölemerikli is currently writing a novel about the life of Lord Zeynel, who ruled Hakkâri between 1555 and 1585.

Works:

Novel:

Cembelî Kurê Mîrê Hekaryan (Cembelî, Son of the Khan of Hakkâri), APEC Editions, 1995 (second edition, Avesta Editions, 2001; third edition, 2013)

Research articles and essays:

Hakkâri Suretleri (Sümbül Dağı’nda Ayın Doğuşunu İzlerken) (Aspects of Hakkâri (While Watching the Moonrise on the Mountain Sümbül)), Lîs Editions, 2006

Mezopotamya Uygarlığında Hakkâri (Hakkâri During the Mesopotamian Civilization), Lîs Editions, 2006

Contact information:

Email address: ihsancolemergi@mynet.com

Personal site:

www.ihsancolemergi.net