Aydın: Difference between revisions
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===Greek Occupation of Aydın=== |
===Greek Occupation of Aydın=== |
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During the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)]], violent fighting took place in and around Aydın, especially in the beginning phase of the war, during the [[Battle of Aydın]] between [[27 June]] and [[4 July]] [[1919]]. |
During the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)]], violent fighting took place in and around Aydın, especially in the beginning phase of the war, during the [[Battle of Aydın]] between [[27 June]] and [[4 July]] [[1919]]. During the Greeek occupation, the civilian population of the city, principally Turkish as well as Greek,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sam.gov.tr/perceptions/sampapers/GREEKOCCUPATIONOFIZMIR.pdf |title=Greek Occupation of İzmir and Adjoining Territories - Report of the Inter-allied Commission of Inquiry (May-September 1919) |last=Erhan |first=Çağrı |year=1999 |month=April |work=SAM Papers No. 2/99}}</ref> suffered heavy casualties. 200 women and children bodies was shot by Greek army found in an empty building in Aydın after the recapturing of the city by paramiliter Turkish forces for 2 days.<ref>Özcan, Murat. Tarihin Işında Yunan Mezalimi, IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, April 2003, İstanbul. P122 </ref> Neither could Aydın's [[History of the Jews in Turkey|Jewish]] population, 3,500-strong for the subdistrict in [[1917]] and concentrated mainly in the city, go unscathed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://kk05.cstgroup.org/pages/bildiri_ozetleri.htm |title=An essay on Aydın's Jewish community from Tanzimat period until the Republic {{tr}}|last=Günver |first=Güneş|year=2005|publisher=[http://www.kulturad.org Association for Researches on Culture] - [[Koç University]]|work=Culture and Identity Symposium, [[İstanbul]]}}</ref> |
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Aydın remained in ruins till it was re-captured by the Turkish army on [[7 September]] 1922. Names of such resistants as the [[efe]] [[Yörük Ali]], who were based in the surrounding mountains and conducted a guerrilla warfare against the Greek army, became heroes in Turkey. Aydın Greeks have been exchanged with Turks living in [[Greece]] under the [[1923]] agreement for the [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|population exchange]] between the two countries. |
Aydın remained in ruins till it was re-captured by the Turkish army on [[7 September]] 1922. Names of such resistants as the [[efe]] [[Yörük Ali]], who were based in the surrounding mountains and conducted a guerrilla warfare against the Greek army, became heroes in Turkey. Aydın Greeks have been exchanged with Turks living in [[Greece]] under the [[1923]] agreement for the [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|population exchange]] between the two countries. |
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Revision as of 11:26, 20 April 2007
Aydın (Greek: Αϊδίνιο) is a city in western Turkey and the seat of the Turkish province of the same name (Aydın Province).
Early history
In ancient Greek sources, the name of the city is given as "Anthea" and "Euanthia". During the Seleucid period, it received the name "Antiochia" (Greek: Αντιόχεια). It has also borne the names "Seleucia ad Maeandrum" and "Erynina".[1] It was known in the Roman and Byzantine Empires as "Tralles" or "Tralleis", and for a time as "Caesarea" (also "Kaisareia").
Strabo describes Tralles as being founded by Argives and Trallians, a Thracian tribe. With the rest of Lydia, the city fell to the Persian Empire. After its success against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta unsuccessfully sought to take the city from the Persians. In 334 BC, Tralles surrendered to Alexander the Great without resistance and therefore was not sacked. Antigonus held the city from 313 to 301 BC. The Seleucids held the city down to 190 BC when it fell to Pergamon. From 133 to 129 BC, the city supported Aristonicus, a pretender to the Pergamene throne, against the Romans. After the Romans defeated him, they revoked the city's right to mint coins.
Tralles was a conventus for a time under the Roman Republic, but Ephesus later took over that position. The city was taken by rebels during the Mithridatic War during which many Roman inhabitants were killed. Tralles suffered greatly from an earthquake in 26 BC.Augustus provided funds for its reconstruction after which the city thanked him by renaming itself Caesarea.
Strabo describes the city as a prosperous trading center in antiquity. Strabo lists famous residents of the city, including Pythodorus (native of Nysa), and orators Damasus Scombrus and Dionysocles. Several centuries later, Anthemius of Tralles, architect of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, was born in Tralles.
An early bishop Polybius (fl. ca. 105) is attested by a letter from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the church at Tralles. The city was officially Christianized, along with the rest of Caria, early after the conversion of Constantine, at which time the see was confirmed. Among the recorded bishops are: Heracleon (431), Maximus (451), Uranius (553), Myron (692), Theophylactus (787), Theophanes and Theopistus both ninth century, and John (1230). Tralles remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church (Tralles in Asia or Trallianus in Asia); the seat is vacant following the death of the last bishop in 1974. [1]
After the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071, the Byzantine Empire was in full retreat throughout Anatolia. The Seljuks took Tralles and it was integrated into the Sultanate of Rüm. Manuel I Comnenus retook the city for Byzantium in the later half of the twelfth century. It remained Byzantine until it was finally taken by the Turks in 1282.
Turkish history
Aydın is named after Aydın Bey, the founder of the Anatolian Turkish Beylik of Aydınoğlu in 1307 and the conqueror of the region. The Beylik of Aydınoğlu ruled the lands north of Menderes up to and including İzmir. The principality has been taken over by the rising Ottoman Empire, for the first time shortly before the Battle of Ankara between the Ottomans and Tamerlane in 1402, and then definitely in 1425, Tamerlane having given back the province to the sons of Aydın in the interval.
Aydın was the principal administrative center for the region under the Ottomans till 1850, its Vilayet (province in the Ottoman administrative system) covering the areas corresponding to Turkey's current Aydın and Muğla provinces, as well as the southern portion of the İzmir Province. Inside that Vilayet, the Sandjak ('district' in the Ottoman administrative system) of Aydın used to correspond more or less to today's Aydın Province. In 1850, the provincial seat has been moved to İzmir, which had started to outgrow Aydın city in size as it became a booming port of international trade, although the province's name remained as the Vilayet of Aydın till the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.
Aydın still benefits from its location at the center of the fertile Menderes valley. Important increases in the population, parallel to the traditional port of the region, İzmir, but more modest in pace, has taken place in the 19th century.[2] At that time, besides such traditional export products of the region as figs and olive oil, cotton has also taken an increasing importance. The fortunes of the Aydın province had been in fact changed with many European investors seeking alternative cotton-producing regions at the time of the American Civil War. The first railroad in the Ottoman Empire was built by a British company connecting Aydın to Smyrna (now İzmir), the 130 km line was opened on 23 September, 1856.[3] There is an imposing train station in the city dating from the same period.
Greek Occupation of Aydın
During the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), violent fighting took place in and around Aydın, especially in the beginning phase of the war, during the Battle of Aydın between 27 June and 4 July 1919. During the Greeek occupation, the civilian population of the city, principally Turkish as well as Greek,[4] suffered heavy casualties. 200 women and children bodies was shot by Greek army found in an empty building in Aydın after the recapturing of the city by paramiliter Turkish forces for 2 days.[5] Neither could Aydın's Jewish population, 3,500-strong for the subdistrict in 1917 and concentrated mainly in the city, go unscathed.[6]
Aydın remained in ruins till it was re-captured by the Turkish army on 7 September 1922. Names of such resistants as the efe Yörük Ali, who were based in the surrounding mountains and conducted a guerrilla warfare against the Greek army, became heroes in Turkey. Aydın Greeks have been exchanged with Turks living in Greece under the 1923 agreement for the population exchange between the two countries.
Aydın today
The last decades saw Aydın going way beyond its traditional role as hub for agricultural products, developing a diversified economy increasingly based on services. The opening in 1992 of Adnan Menderes University, named after a favorite son of Aydın, Adnan Menderes, Turkey's prime minister during the 1950s, as well as of other notable educational institutions, also led to the city's becoming an attractive center for studies, aided in this by the hospitable environment at only an hour's drive from the sea-shore. In fact, many residents of Aydın typically have summer houses and investments in or around such centers of tourism as Kuşadası, Güzelçamlı and Didim. The construction of the six-lane İzmir-Aydın motorway also enhanced Aydın's connections to İzmir, Turkey's second portuary center, reducing the ride between the two cities also to an hour's drive, and to shorter still for the international Adnan Menderes Airport served by the same motorway.
But its dominance, within both the Turkish market and abroad, in the production of a number of agricultural products still identifies Aydın Province. Among these products, figs (ficus carica) undoubtedly occupy the most notable place. The very name by which the fruit was called in the world markets was "Smyrna figs" till recently, due to the preponderance of figs exported from İzmir over other species of the genus, upon which the term "Smyrna figs" became synonymous with the fig itself. And İzmir gave its name to the fruit solely for being the center for the wholesale trading and the exports, while the fruit is traditionally cultivated and processed in Aydın and its depending districts. The term used within Turkey is "Aydın figs" (Aydın inciri). Inside Turkey's yearly production of roughly 50,000 tons of dried figs, the share incumbent on provinces other than Aydın remains insignificant,[7] and in present day, the sales are also being managed and handled from Aydın self. Within Aydın Province, the best figs are reputed to be grown in Germencik.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Hazlit, William (1851). The Classical Gazetteer. pp. p. 353.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ According to 1912 figures, the Sandjak of Aydın had a total population of 220000, in which 39000-54500 according to varying sources, were Greeks. The sizable share of the Greek population was, as it was the case with many other localities across Western Anatolia, the result of an increase due to economic migration from Aegean Islands or even the Greek mainland to fertile Anatolian valleys as of the beginning of the 19th century and especially during its second half. A 1856 British report presented to the Secretary of State for War describes Aydın region in elogious terms and Aydın and the Menderes River valley to be entirely Turk. (full text) Report on Smyrna by George Rolleston for the Secretary of State for War. Section on Aydın, p. 104-108
- ^ "Fast lines take priority in Turkish investment". Railway Gazette International.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|accessed=ignored (help) - ^ Erhan, Çağrı (1999). "Greek Occupation of İzmir and Adjoining Territories - Report of the Inter-allied Commission of Inquiry (May-September 1919)" (PDF). SAM Papers No. 2/99.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Özcan, Murat. Tarihin Işında Yunan Mezalimi, IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, April 2003, İstanbul. P122
- ^ Günver, Güneş (2005). "An essay on Aydın's Jewish community from Tanzimat period until the Republic [[:Template:Tr]]". Culture and Identity Symposium, İstanbul. Association for Researches on Culture - Koç University.
{{cite web}}: External link in|publisher= - ^ US Department of Agriculture briefing report on world fig production For comparison, the world's second and the third largest producers of dried figs, namely Greece and California, each produce around 12,500 tons per year. Since Aydın dominates the Turkish market in figs, the province also soars over these two producers by almost fourfold.
References
- Blue Guide, Turkey, The Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts (ISBN 030304892), pp. 353-54.
- Richard Talbert, Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (ISBN 069103169X), p. 61.
