Foça

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Foça
Foça coat of arms
Foça (Turkey)
Red pog.svg
Basic data
Province (il) : Izmir
Coordinates : 38 ° 40 '  N , 26 ° 45'  E Coordinates: 38 ° 40 '3 "  N , 26 ° 45' 29"  E
Residents : 30,002 (2014)
Telephone code : (+90)
Postal code : 35 xxx
License plate : 35
Structure and administration (as of 2016)
Mayor : Gökhan Demirağ ( CHP )
Website:
Foça county
Residents : 30,002 (2014)
Surface: 204 km²
Population density : 147 inhabitants per km²
Kaymakam : Niyazi Ulugolge
Website (Kaymakam):
Template: Infobox location in Turkey / maintenance / district

Foça is a small Turkish town and the associated district in the province of Izmir . After a regional reform, the city is identical in terms of population and area to the district. It is the successor settlement of the ancient and medieval Greek city of Phokaia ( Greek  Φώκαια ), also Phocäa (from the Latin form Phocaea ), Galloital Foggia . Phocaia was on the peninsula between the Gulf of Elaia and that of Smyrna . It was inhabited by Ionians , but was in Aeolia . The city had a port, in front of which was the small island of Bakchion , occupied with temples and palaces .

history

Lighthouse, 1897

In archaic times, the inhabitants of Phocaia made sea ​​voyages as far as Spain and established trading bases . Among Phocaia's colonies are Massilia (present-day Marseille ), Lampsakos and Elaia . When the city was threatened by the Persians , according to Herodotus, the Tartessian king Arganthonios offered the Phocai to resettle in his kingdom. When they refused, he sent them large amounts of gold to build a defensive wall against the Persians. After the city was ruled by the Persians under Harpagos around 545 BC. After a long time BC was besieged, the Phocaeans - according to Herodotus - hurried in a hopeless situation secretly on their ships and emigrated to the colonies, many to Corsica , to Alalia ( Aléria ) , which was founded twenty years earlier .

Phocaia later seized for Antiochus III. of Syria and was therefore conquered by the Romans .

Phokaia was settled in Asia Minor until the end of the Byzantine period in the 14th century. Between 1264 and 1455 the city was a Genoese colony under the name Foggia , most recently under the patrician family of Gattilusio .

Phokaia was given to the Genoese around 1275 as a Byzantine fief in thanks for their support in the reunification of the Byzantine Empire after the 4th Crusade . As a result, it was an important trading port, mainly thanks to the region's rich deposits of alum . The alum mines were made available to the Genoese brothers Benedetto and Manuele Zaccaria as early as 1267. The Genoese retained control of the city during the Ottoman era through the lease agreement of 1275. Another important Byzantine fiefdom to the Genoese was the nearby island of Lesbos , which the Gattilusio family owned at the wedding of Francesco I Gattilusio and Maria Palaiologina, the Sister of the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos , given as a dowry in 1335. The possession of the Gattilosios grew in the further course around the islands of Imbros , Samothrace , Lemnos and the city of Aenos . From this position they were heavily involved in the mining and distribution of alum , which was used for textile production and represented a profitable raw material for the Genoese traders.

The Greek population of the place was expelled between 1914 and 1922 or forcibly evacuated under the Treaty of Lausanne . Today the city is generally referred to as Foça, but officially a distinction is made between Eski Foça (Old Foça) and Yenifoça (New Foça), which is around 20 km away.

Hardly any remains of the ancient city have survived, apart from two rock tombs in the vicinity of the city.

Economy and Infrastructure

Today's Foça has been largely spared from foreign mass tourism and is instead a popular weekend and holiday destination for the residents of Izmir . The reason for this is primarily that the Turkish Navy has stationed itself in a bay directly adjacent to the new port and so an expansion of the place on the coast was largely prevented.

In Foça itself, the original flair has been preserved, although holiday homes, several guest houses and two hotels have also been built here in the last two decades . In the picturesque harbor lined a fish - restaurant to the other. This is where locals from Izmir who want to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city meet at the weekend . The typical audience is made up of the upper Turkish middle class: teachers, artists, musicians, engineers meet here.

Those who take longer vacations prefer Yenifoça approx. 20 km north, which is not as spectacular in terms of landscape, but offers enough hotels and holiday complexes for domestic and foreign tourists.

Foça is also known for the Siren Islands, which Homer already described in his Odyssey . Today, however, they are better known for being home to some of the last monk seals in the Mediterranean. For this reason, the Siren Islands can only be viewed from a distance. They are uninhabited and are used by the local population to release a small number of goats, which can feed on the very barren vegetation and the morning dew as liquid, as the islands do not have any natural water supplies.

Personalities

gallery

  • Satellite photo with the location of the ancient cities of Phokaia, Kyme and Smyrna

  • Eski Foça, view over the old town to the Siren Islands

  • Port of Foça

  • Foça bazaar

literature

  • Ayşem Kiliç-Ünlü: Heritage, Economy and Development of Historic Towns after the “Tourism Explosion”: Foça in Western Turkey . In: Elena Korka (Ed.): The Protection of Archaeological Heritage in Times of Economic Crisis . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, ISBN 9781443874113 , pp. 330-354.
  • Ekrem Akurgal :  Phokaia (Foça) Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
  • George Ewart Bean : Asia Minor, Volume 1: Aegean Turkey from Pergamon to Didyma. 5th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1987, ISBN 3-17-009678-8 , pp. 117-125.
  • Ernst Langlotz : The cultural and artistic Hellenization of the coasts of the Mediterranean by the city of Phokaia (= Working Group for Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Humanities. H. 130, ISSN  0570-5649 ). Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne et al. 1966.
  • Vera Hell: Istanbul, Ankara and the ancient sites on the west coast of Turkey. Hopfer, Tübingen 1959, DNB 451939506 .
  • Michael Neumann-Adrian, Christoph K. Neumann: Turkey, west coast. Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7742-0345-8 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Foça  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Turkish Institute for Statistics ( Memento from January 19, 2016 on WebCite ), accessed January 19, 2016
  2. ↑ Herodotus, Histories 1.63.
  3. ↑ Herodotus, Historien 1, 164 f.