Hatay (Province)

Hatay
Province number:	31
Counties
Basic data
Coordinates:	36 ° 26 '  N , 36 ° 10'  E Coordinates: 36 ° 26 '  N , 36 ° 10'  E
Provincial capital:	Antakya
Region:	Mediterranean region
Surface:	5,678 km²
Population:	1,555,165 (2016)
Population density:	274 inhabitants / km²
Political
Governor:	Erdal Ata
Seats in Parliament:	10
Structural
Telephone code:	0326
Features :	31
Website
www.hatay.gov.tr (Turkish)

Hatay ( Arabic هاتاي) is a province in southern Turkey . Its capital is Antakya , the former Antioch . In today's borders it is one of the smaller provinces of the country with 5,678 km², but is one of the most densely populated (274 inhabitants per km²) and with around 1,555,165 inhabitants also one of the more populous (as of 2016).

The area of ​​Hatay, called Sanjak Alexandrette in the west until the end of the 1930s , today forms the geographically southernmost part of Turkey and lies between the Mediterranean coast in the west and the Syrian border in the east. The main cities are İskenderun and Antakya .

geography

46% of the area are mountains, 33% valleys and 20% plateaus. The most important mountain range is the Nurgebirge in a north-south direction. It is also known under the name of Gavur or Amanos Mountains . The highest peak is Mığır Tepe with 2240 m. Other high mountains are the Ziyaret Dağ and the Keldağ with 1739 m ( Arabic جبل الأقرع, DMG Ǧabal al-Aqraʿ , Latin Casius ).

The main river is the Asi , also known by the Greek name Orontes . It comes from Lebanon and flows into the Mediterranean via Syria in southern Hatay near the town of Samandağ.

Important lakes are Gölbaşı and Yenişehir Gölü. The Amik lake dried up in the 1970s and is now used as an agricultural area.

The Amik Valley is the most important valley in Hatay. Other valleys are Dörtyol, Arsuz, Payas, İskenderun and Erzin.

Districts

The province is divided into 15 districts ( İlçe ), which are subordinate to a Kaymakam . After an administrative reform in 2014, the entire area of ​​the province is organized as a metropolitan municipality Hatay ( Hatay Büyükşehir Belediyesi , founded in 2012), which is headed by a Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı ( Lord Mayor ). In each of the 16 districts there is a sub-municipality of the same name (Belediye) under a Belediye Başkanı ( mayor ). All other communities and villages ( Köy ) were dissolved. As subdivisions, mahall exist under a muhtar . During the administrative reform, the area around Antakya, whose state administration was until then directly subordinate to the governor ( Hatay Merkez ), was organized as İlçe under the direction of a Kaymakam.

The 15 districts / boroughs are as follows:

Antakya Altınözü Arsuz Belen Defne Dörtyol Ore	Hassa İskenderun Kırıkhan Kumlu Payas Reyhanlı Samandağ Yayladağı

history

The flag of the Republic of Hatay

The earliest traces of human settlement - stone tools and worked snail shells - are around 40,000 years old; they have been recovered in the Üçağızlı cave since the early 1990s .

The province of Hatay belonged to the Ottoman Empire until the beginning of the 20th century and was occupied by the French in 1918 after its defeat in the First World War. After the Treaty of Sanremo in 1920, it was administered by France as part of the Syrian Mandate . However, it remained separate from French Syria and was granted autonomy on March 4, 1923 .

Originally, France did not want a unified Syrian state, but intended to be divided into four states with their own government, whereby religious and denominational aspects should play a role. In Alexandrette, Armenian refugees from all over Cilicia were to receive a home together with the Arab majority of the population and other minorities.

With the foreseeable end of the French mandate over Syria, Turkey intensified its demands for an annexation of the area from 1936. France accommodated the Turkish demands to break away from the Syrian mandate in order to prevent Turkey from entering the war on the part of the German Reich.

On September 2, 1938, the independent but short-lived Republic of Hatay was proclaimed in İskenderun . The union with the Turkish Republic was decided by the Parliament of Hatay State on June 29, 1939. France , the then mandate power of Syria and Lebanon , had agreed to the Anschluss in a treaty with Turkey on June 23, 1939. Since then Hatay has been a province of the Turkish Republic.

The area around ancient Antioch only became part of the Turkish Republic after a referendum in 1939. To this day, Syria lays claim to Hatay and is still a point of contention between the states of Syria and Turkey. Nevertheless, there is (except in times of war) a brisk small border traffic across the border; Hatay residents can easily enter Syria with day visas, also as a result of the 1939 treaty. The economic exchange of goods between the two countries takes place primarily via Hatay, with Syria mainly supplying agricultural products and Turkey more industrial and commercial products.

Naming

The name Hatay is related to a publication by the publicist İsmail Müştak Mayakon. In the mid-1930s, based on the existence of a village of Hetye and the so-called Hata Turks, whom he equated with the Hittites , he claimed that Turks had settled in the Antakya and İskenderun region for 4,000 years. The provincial parliament then decided to name the future "state" Hatay.

population

Hatay is one of the most cosmopolitan provinces in Turkey. The majority of the population in the south consists of Arab Alawis (Nusairians) and Christians of Greek descent (Orthodox and Catholics). There is also an Armenian and a Jewish community in the village of Vakıflı . In the north, besides Turkish Sunnis, there are also Yazidi Kurds who increasingly moved from Anatolia to the south. There is also in the district Altinözü with Tokaçlı the only largely inhabited by Arabic-speaking Christians Village Turkey, whose dialect to the North Levantine belongs.

literature

• Gilquin Michel: D'Antioche au Hatay - L'histoire oubliée du Sanjak d'Alexandrette. 2000, ISBN 2-7384-9266-5 .
• Robert Fisk : The Great War For Civilization The Conquest of The Middle East. 2005, ISBN 1-84115-007-X .
• Halil Gülbeyaz : Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. From state founder to myth. Parthas-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-932529-49-9 , p. 220 f.

In Franz Werfel's novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh , the genocide of the Armenians in the vicinity of the Musa Dağı Mountain, which belongs to the Hatay province, and the Armenian resistance there under the leadership of Moses the Kalousdian are processed in literary terms.

Web links

Commons : Hatay Province  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Gary Brecher: The War Nerd: Cleanse Thy Neighbor. Not Safe For Work Corporation is the Future of Journalism, October 8, 2012 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Turkish Institute for Statistics , accessed December 24, 2017
2. ↑ Hatay Province website
3. ^ Klaus Kreiser: Small Turkey Lexicon. Munich 1992, sv Hatay