Akanthou / Tatlısu

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Akanthou
Ακανθού
Tatlısu
Akanthou / Tatlısu (Cyprus)
Bluedot.svg
Basic data
State : Northern CyprusTurkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (de facto)
District : Northern CyprusTurkish Republic of Northern Cyprus İskele
Geographic coordinates : 35 ° 22 ′  N , 33 ° 45 ′  E Coordinates: 35 ° 22 ′  N , 33 ° 45 ′  E
Residents : 1459 (2011)

Akanthou ( Greek Ακανθού , Turkish Tatlısu , formerly Akantu or Aqattu) is one of the largest places on the Karpas Peninsula in eastern Cyprus, on the western edge of which it is located. The village, which was predominantly inhabited by Greek Cypriots until 1974, was evacuated in the course of the civil war and settled by Cypriot Turks, who in turn emigrated. From the late 1970s, Turks immigrated from Anatolia. In 2016, the village, which the Greeks call Akanthou and the Turks Tatlısu, again had almost 1,500 inhabitants.

history

The history of the place goes back almost ten millennia with interruptions.

Neolithic

Akanthou-Arkosykos or Tatlisu-Çiftlikdüzü archaeological site is four kilometers away from the village, on the slopes of the Kantara Mountains . The traces go back to the Neolithic , but also include the Bronze Age and Antiquity . The coastal strip was also known as the “Shores of the Achaeans”, where Teukros , the legendary founder of Salamis, is said to have landed.

Numerous shells that have been edited and were intended as jewelry, thousands of obsidian blades , bone fragments of various pets, such as pigs or sheep, but also wild animals such as pygmy hippo or fallow represented Neolithic artifacts on the Turkish archaeologist Müge Şevketoğlu wrote her dissertation. The surprisingly large settlement from the time between 8200 and 7800/7700 BC Chr. Measured 470 by 70 m. During the excavation campaign in 2005, a jawbone and skull fragments of a man around 25 years old were found. Around 8200 BC Arkosykos, which originated in the 3rd century BC, fills the gap between the first traces of settlement in Aetokremnos (around 9825 BC) and the beginning of the Chirokitia culture (around 7000 BC), the main site of which was a large settlement of perhaps a thousand inhabitants in about 60 houses, located 32 km southwest of Larnaka . The Akanthou settlers, who probably came from Asia Minor , brought their own goats, sheep, pigs and cattle, as well as fallow deer, dogs and, surprisingly, foxes, as well as wheat , barley and lentils , probably also peas . They lived in at least seven stone round houses. The enormous number of obsidian blades as well as the fact that no cores were found - i.e. no production took place on site - could indicate that the settlement was an important distribution center in the eastern Mediterranean.

Antiquity, Byzantium

North of Akanthou lies the Liastrika ruins, which are now identified with the Hellenistic Aphrodision . According to Terence Bruce Mitford , Aphrodision was the capital of Karpas in the late Iron Age , but was then replaced by Karpasia , which in turn came under the rule of Salamis . A temple of Aphrodite probably existed in Aphrodision . In the meantime, an illegally built, three-story hotel was built there in the archaeologically relevant zone.

The former Akanthou Orthodox Church converted into a mosque and restored in 2003
Models in Tatlısu, here a mosque

The Greek settlement Akanthou did not develop until between the 7th and 10th centuries. The name probably goes back either to the Greek word 'anghati', which means 'thorny' or 'pointed', or it goes back to a thorny plant that only exists in the Levant. The Turkish name Tatlısu was given to the place in 1975 in memory of the fact that the newcomers had to vacate the village of the same name in the south of the island. The name means 'sweet water' or 'drinking water'.

Resettlement, Venetians, Ottomans

The first settlement was on the coast, but was abandoned in view of the Mamluks' raids and relocated to its current location. Under the Lusignan , sugar cane was cultivated in the plains around Akanthou, although production in the southwest of the island always remained more important than that on the Karpas. The Venetians, who ruled the island from 1489 to 1570/71, continued the sugar tradition, which dates back to the 10th century, around Akanthou, as did the Ottomans, who conquered Cyprus from the Venetians. The same applies to the extraction of mulberries .

When in 1690 the fleet under the command of Çıfıtoğlu Ahmet Pascha set out to suppress the "uprising" that had begun in 1685 under Mehmed Ağa Boyacıoğlu , it set sail from Akanthou to confiscate the flour mills in Kythrea . The rebels entrenched in Nicosia were thus deprived of their supply base; Boyacıoğlu, who had fled, was executed that same year, as were his followers.

Akanthou has always been inhabited by Greek Cypriots. Olive oil was one of the most important products in the Ottoman era. Already in the first Ottoman census, the Greek Cypriots made up almost 96% of the village's population in 1831, with only heads of household recorded, of which 131 were counted. 10 of them were considered to be Turks.

British rule, independence, civil war

Distribution of the ethnic focus in eastern Cyprus

Until 1891, when the British ruled the island, this proportion rose slightly to 96.6%, with 1185 inhabitants, including 63 Turks. The proportion of Muslims in the population fell continuously from 63 people in 1891 to eight in 1946, while the village grew from 1,185 to 1,782 inhabitants over the same period. Akanthou, which was on the western edge of the Karpas, was beaten to the Mesaoria plain in 1881, but returned to the Karpas in 1891.

Overview map

By 1960 the last Turks had left the village during the civil war-like conditions, while the number of Greeks, which had been 1507 in 1960, also fell, namely to 1294 by 1973. In August 1974, all residents fled from the Turkish army to the south . They sought refuge in the cities of the southern part of Cyprus.

Initially, the abandoned place was settled in 1974 by around 700 Turkish Cypriots from Mari / Tatlısu . But most of them also preferred being close to a larger city. When the Greeks from Belapais , a few kilometers southeast of the city of Kyrenia , were deported to the south of the island in 1976 , most of the Turks from Tatlısu resettled to Belapais. Only about 100 of them stayed in Akanthou.

Resettlement, immigration from Anatolia, the Aegean and Black Sea regions

Now the village was again settled from outside, this time by landless people from Turkey, who came mainly from the districts and provinces of Konya , Adana , Araklı , Osmaniye , Çaykara , Kahramanmaraş and Gaziantep . In 1996 there were again 1,029 inhabitants, in 2006 there were 1,160, with the number of residents increasing to over 2,000 during the summer season. In 2011 there were already 1,459 inhabitants.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Muge Şevketoğlu, Ian Hanson: Akanthou-Arkosykos, a ninth Millenium BC coastal settlement in Cyprus , in: Environmental Archeology: The Journal of Human Palaeoecology 20.3 (2015) 225-238.
  2. ↑ Tatlisu-Çiftlikdüzü , Northern Cyprus travel guide.
  3. ↑ Muge Şevketoğlu: Early Settlements and Precurement of Raw Materials - New Evidence Based on Recent Research at Akanthou Arkosykos - Tatlısu Cıftlıkduzu , in: Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi arkeoloji dergisi 11 (2008) 63–72.
  4. ↑ Cyprus - The excavations of Choirokoitia (Chirokitia) ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , The world heritage in Cyprus @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.xago.org
  5. ↑ Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen: The Roads of Ancient Cyprus , Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004, p. 158.
  6. ^ Terence Bruce Mitford: Further Contributions to the Epigraphy of Cyprus , in: American Journal of Archeology 65.2 (1961), p. 122.
  7. ↑ Anja Ulbrich: Kypris. Sanctuaries and cults of female deities in Cyprus in the Kyproarchaic and Kyproclassic epochs (royal times) , Ugarit-Verlag, 2008, p. 131.
  8. ↑ ICOMOS. Heritage at Risk: Cyprus , 2006/07, p. 49 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Table on population development since 1831 and further information .
  10. ↑ Mohamed Ouerfelli: Le sucre. Production, commercialization et usages dans la Méditerranée médiévale , Brill, 2008, p. 109.
  11. ^ Ronald C. Jennings: Village Life in Cyprus at the Time of the Ottoman Conquest , Press Isis, 2009, p. 108.
  12. ↑ Marios Hadjianastasis: Crossing the line in the sand: regional officials, monopolization of state power and 'rebellion'. The case of Mehmed Ağa Boyacıoğlu in Cyprus, 1685-1690 , in: Turkish Historical Review 2.2 (2011) 155-176.
  13. ↑ Marios Hadjianastasis: Cyprus in the Ottoman Period: Consolidation of the Cypro-Ottoman Elite, 1650-1750 , in: Michalis N. Michael, Eftihios Gavriel, Matthias Kappler (ed.): Ottoman Cyprus. A Collection of Studies on History and Culture , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 63–88, here: pp. 85 f.
  14. ^ Anna Matthaiou: Aspects de l'alimentation en Grèce sous la domination ottomane. Des réglementations au discours normatif , Peter Lang, 1997, p. 312.
  15. ↑ Andrekos Varnava: Famagusta during the Great War: From Backwater to Bustling , in: Michael JK Walsh (ed.): City of Empires. Ottoman and British Famagusta , Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 167–209, here: p. 174.