Hatay

Geography

46% of the land is mountain, 33% plain and 20% plateau and hillside. The most prominent feature is the north-south leading Nur Mountains and the highest peak is Mığırtepe (2240m), other peaks include Ziyaret dağı and Keldağ (Jebel Akra or Casius) at 1739 m. The folds of land that make up the landscape of the province were formed as the land masses of Arabian-Nubian Shield and Anatolia have pushed into each other, meeting here in Hatay, a classic example of the Horst-graben formation. The Orontes River rises in the Bekaa Valley in K Lebanon and runs through Syria and Hatay and into the Mediterranean at its delta in Samandağ. There was a lake in the plain of Amik but this was drained in the 1970s, and today Amik is now the largest of the plains that are important centres of agricultural production in Hatay. The climate of Hatay is typical of the Mediterranean, with warm wet winters and hot, dry summers. The mountain areas inland are drier than the coast. There are some mineral deposits, Iskenderun is home to Turkey’s largest iron and steel plant, and the district of Yayladağı produces a colourful marble called the Rose of Hatay.

The administrative capital is Antakya (Antioch), while the largest city in the province is the port city of İskenderun (Alexandretta). There are border crossing points with Syria in the district of Yayladağı and at Cilvegözü in the district of Reyhanlı.

Hatay is warm enough to grow tropical crops such as sweet potato and sugar cane, and these are used in the local cuisine, along with other local specialities including a type of cucumber/squash called kitte. Well-known dishes of Hatay include the syrupy-pastry künefe, squash cooked in onions and tomato paste (sıhılmahsi}, the aubergine and yoghurt paste (Baba ghanoush), and the chick-pea paste hummus as well as dishes such as kebab which are found throughout Turkey. In general the people of Hatay produce lots of spicy dishes including the walnut and spice paste muhammara), the spicy köfte called oruk, the thyme and parsley paste Za’atar and the spicy sun-dried cheese called Surke. Finally syrup of pomegranate is a popular salad dressing particular to this area.

Mustafa Kemal University is one of Turkey’s newer tertiary institutions, founded in Antakya in 1992.

Places of interest

With its hilly countryside and a number of places of historical and religious interest Hatay is attractive to visitors. There are a number of music and folklore festivals held in the province each year. Particular sites of interest include:

• the world’s second-largest collection of Roman mosaics in Antakya museum
• the rock-carved Church of St Peter in Antakya, a site of Christian pilgrimage.
• Gündüz cinema, once used as parliament building of the Republic of Hatay.
• The tunnel of Vespasian, in Samandağı, built as a water channel in the 2nd century. 

Antakya

Oldhouse from Antakya Turkey by Volkan HVC

The city and its massive walls also played an important role during the Crusades.

Geography

Antakya is located on the banks of the Orontes River (Turkish: Asi Nehri), approximately 22 km inland from the Mediterranean coast. It enjoys a Mediterranean climate with hot and dry summers, and mild and wet winters; however due to its higher altitude, Antakya has slightly cooler temperatures than the coast. The city is in a valley surrounded by mountains, the Nur Mountains to the north and Mount Keldağ (Jebel Akra to the south, with the 440 m high Mount Habib Neccar (ancient Silpius) forming its eastern limits. The mountains are a source of a green marble. Antakya is at the northern edge of the Dead Sea Rift and vulnerable to earthquakes.

The plain of Amik to the north-east of the city is fertile soil watered by the Orontes, the Karasu River and the Afrin River, the lake in the plain was drained in 1980 by a French company. At the same time channels were built to widen the Orontes River and let it pass neatly through the city centre. The Orontes is joined in Antakya by the Hacı Kürüş stream to the north-east of the city near the church of St Peter, and the Hamşen which runs down from Habib-i Neccar to the south-west, under Memekli Bridge near the army barracks. Flora includes the bay trees and myrtle.

The city of Antakya today

Mount Habib Neccar and the city walls which climb the hillsides symbolise Antakya, making the city a formidable fortress built on a series of hills running north-east to south-west. Antakya was originally centred on the eastern bank of the river but since the 19th century the city has expanded with new neighbourhoods built on the plains across the river to the south-west, and there are four bridges across the river linking the old and new cities. However like so much of Turkey the buildings of the last two decades are all concrete blocks of stupendous ugliness and Antakya has lost much of its classic beauty. The narrow streets of the old city to get clogged with traffic.

Although the port of Iskenderun has become the largest city in Hatay, Antakya is a provincial capital still of considerable importance as the centre of a large district, growing in wealth and productiveness with the draining of Lake Amik. The town is a lively shopping and business centre with many restaurants, cinemas and other amenities, centred on a large park opposite the governor’s building and the central avenue Kurtuluş Caddesı. The tea gardens, cafes and restaurants in the neighbourhood of Harbiye are one of the city’s most popular spots, particularly for the variety of meze in the restaurants. The Orontes River is rather smelly when water is low in summer. Although the people are generally modern in outlook (the girls are mostly in modern clothes, without headscarves) there is little in the way of wild night life. In the summer heat people will stay outside until late in the night walking with their families and friends and munching on snacks.

Being so near the Syrian border Antakya is a cosmopolitan city unlike most places in rural Turkey today, and Antakya has not experienced the 1980s and 1990s mass immigration of people from eastern Anatolia that has radically swelled the populations of other Mediterranean cities such as Adana and Mersin. As a result both Turkish and Arabic are still widely spoken in Antakya although you do not see Arabic written very much. A mixed community of faiths and demoninations co-exist peacefully here; although almost all the inhabitants are Muslim a substantial proportion adhere to the minority Alevi and the Arab minority Nusayri traditions, in ‘Harbiye’ there is a place to honour the Nusayri saint Hızır. There are a number of tombs of Muslim saints, both Sunni and Alevi, throughout the city. There are also still small active Christian communities in the city, the largest church being St Peter and St Paul on Hurriyet Caddesi. With its long history of spiritual and religious movements Antakya is still a place of pilgrimage for Christians and Muslims and furthermore still carries a reputation in Turkey as a centre of spells, fortune telling, miracles and spirits.

Local crafts include a soap scented with oil of bay tree.

Cuisine

The cuisine of Antakya is renowned, popular dishes include the typical Turkish kebab, served in Antakya with spices and onions in flat unleavened bread, or with yoghurt as ali nazik kebab. Hot spicy food is a feature of this part of Turkey, along with Turkish coffee and local specialities including:

Sweets

• Künefe – a hot cheese pastry sweet. Antakya is Turkey’s künefe capital, with the pastry shops in the centre all proclaiming themselves king Turkish: kral. The secret is in the light yellow cheese that they use.
• Müşebbek – rings of deep fried pastry

Savories

• Pomegranate syrup, used as a salad dressing
• Semirsek a thin bread with hot pepper, minced meat or spinach filling
• Içli köfte and oruk – varieties of the Arabic kibbeh, deep-fried balls of bulgur stuffed with minced meat
• Spicy chicken, a speciality of Harbiye
• Za’atar spiced thyme, spread on flat bread
• fresh chick peas, munched as a snack

Meze

• Hummus – the chick-pea dip
• pureed fava beans
• Surke – the spicy sun-dried cheese
• Çökelek – dried curds served in spicy olive oil
• Eels from the Orontes, spiced and fried in olive oil.

History

Antiquity

See Antioch for the long, rich history of this area in the ancient and classical periods, dating back to the Calcolithic era of 5000 BC (as revealed by excavations of the mound of Tell-Açana among others). Subsequent rulers of the area include Alexander the Great, who after defeating the Persians in 333 BC followed the Orontes south into Syria. The city of Antioch was founded in 300 BC, after the death of Alexander, by the Seleucid King Antiochus Soter, and went on to play an important part in the history as one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire and Byzantium, a key location of the early years of Christianity, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the rise of Islam and The Crusades. Muslims believe that it will be found by Mahdi near the end of times in the city of Antakya.

The Ottoman city of Antakya

In 1822 (and again in 1872), Antakya was hit by an earthquake so when Ottoman general Ibrahim Pasha established his headquarters in the city in 1835, it had only some 5000 inhabitants. It was hoped that the city might develop thanks to the Euphrates valley railway, which was supposed to link it to the port of Suedia (now Samandağı). But such plans were doomed to come to naught. Instead, the city was struck by repeated outbreaks of cholera. Later the city did nevertheless develop and rapidly resumed much of its old importance when a railway was built along the lower Orontes valley.

Places of interest

• With its remarkable history there is much for visitors to see in Antakya, although much has doubtless been lost in the rapid and ugly growth of the city in recent decades.
• Antakya Archaeological Museum has the second largest collection of Roman mosaics in the world, found when excavating Roman villas on the hillside at Harbiye. (Entry is 5 lira for foreigners, 2 lira for Turkish citizens).
• the rock-carved Church of St Peter, with its network of refuges and tunnels carved out of the rock, a site of Christian pilgrimage. There are also tombs cut into the rock face at various places along the Orontes valley.
• The seedy Gündüz cinema in the city centre was once used as parliament building of the Republic of Hatay.
• the waterfall and restaurants at Harbiye.
• The Ottoman Habib-i Neccar Camii is the oldest mosque in Antakya.
• The labyrinth of narrow streets in the old market area
• The views of the city from the hillsides above. 

Iskenderun

Geography

Iskenderun is located on the Mediterranean coast on the eponymous Gulf of İskenderun at the foot of the Nur Mountains (Amanos Mountains).

Iskenderun is a busy commercial centre, with 200,000 people the largest city in Hatay, surpassing the Hatay provincial seat of Antakya. The city is one of Turkey’s largest ports on the Mediterranean and an important industrial centre home to the Russian-built İsdemir compound, one of Turkey’s largest steelworks. Iskenderun has a cosmopolitan populace speaking both Turkish and Arabic, and an active, modern life with good hotels, restaurants and cafes along the palm-lined sea front, and there is a variety of accommodation for visitors. Iskenderun is also an important naval training base. There is a small Suryani Christian community in the city.

The climate on this stretch of the Mediterranean is very, very hot and humid in summer, when people escape to the countryside or to the beach. At certain times of the year the town is swept by the strong wind called ‘yarık kaya’. The countryside contains large areas of fruit groves, important producers of oranges, tangerines and lemons, and even tropical dishes such as mangoes.

Cuisine

The cuisine of Iskenderun is delicious, especially Künefe, a hot dessert with cheese. The main dishes include the Turkish staples such as döner and other kebabs served in the flat durum bread, lahmacun, and also the Arab-Levantine cuisine of Antakya including kibbeh, and pomegranate syrup used as a salad dressing. Iskenderun in particular offers good quality fish and prawns.

History

Antiquity

İskenderun preserves the name, but probably not the exact site, of Alexandria ad Issum, founded to supersede Myriandrus as the key of the Syrian Gates by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, about 23 miles south of the scene of his victory at the Battle of Issos. The importance of the place ever since has derived from its relation to this pass, the easiest approach to the open ground of Hatay and of Northern Syria, and the Romans continued to fight with Persia for control of this area during their era of dominance.

Since his army has been located at the high-lands of Iskenderun, around Esentepe, Alexander the Great has faced the nature and beauty of the location. Just after this, city has been established with the order of Alexander the Great and named as "Alexandrette". Iskenderun is one of the other cities that have been setup by his order, like Alexandria.

The Ottomans

The area was still a scene of fighting under the Ottomans, as it was here in 1606 that the army of general Kuyucu Murat Pasha suppressed the rural uprising of Celali Canbulatoğlu. The Ottomans continued to fortify the city and the remains of early 17th century Ottoman castle walls can still be seen, (where the Güzün stream crosses the Varyant road). The next army to cross the Pass of Belen and attack Anatolia though here were the Egyptians of Muhammad Ali in 1832.

However in the later Ottoman period the city grew and grew as the main outlet for the overland trade from Baghdad and India, which had great importance until the establishment of the Egyptian overland route. Iskenderun served as a base first of Genoese and Venetian merchants, then West and North European merchants. The British Levant Company maintained an agency and factory here for 200 years, until 1825, in spite of appalling mortality among its employees. During the 19th century the port grew, the railway was built in 1912, and the road to Aleppo was improved.

The Republic of Hatay

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War most of Hatay including Iskenderun was occupied by French troops and in 1921 was established as the autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta within French-controlled Syria. This led to the foundation of the Republic of Hatay and the areas absorption into the Republic of Turkey in 1939.

Places of interest

• Arsuz(Uluçınar), holiday town on the coast to the south of Iskenderun, with beautiful sandy beaches, a very warm sea, and places of historical interest. The coast is lined with holiday homes and there is accommodation in hotels or guest houses.
• Soğukoluk, mountain resort on the way to Antakya a quiet retreat from the heat of the coast in summer months.
• Bakras – The castle was built in antiquity and much restored since, a watchtower on the mountain road, 27 km from Iskenderun on the road to Antakya.
• Yakacik (Payas) – contains a splendid example of Ottoman architecture dating back to the 16th century; the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Complex comprising a mosque, bath, bazaar, caravanserai, and madrasa. 22km from Iskenderun on the road to Adana.