Çerkezköy

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Çerkezköy is a district of Tekirdağ Province of Turkey, in inland Thrace just to the west of the outlying Istanbul districts of Çatalca and Silivri. Çerkezköy is an industrial area and the most populous district of Tekirdağ. It is 56 km from Tekirdağ and 110 km from Istanbul but in many ways has closer links to the big city. Area 326 km².

[edit] History

Until the 1800s this was a village called 'Türbedere'. 'Türbe' is the Turkish for 'tomb' and the village took its name from the tomb of the eldest son of sultan Bayezid_I, Suleiman Çelebi, who was murdered here in 1410 when fleeing from his brothers during the Ottoman_Interregnum. The tomb was destroyed by Bulgarian troops when they occupied the town for nine months during the war for Bulgarian Independence in 1912.

Çerkezköy was founded as a settlement for refugees from the Caucasus following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 ('Çerkez' being the Turkish pronunciation of 'Caucasus'). Soon after, following the independence of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire further waves of refugees from Bulgaria came to replace the Caucasians and Çerkezköy was deignated as a town ('belediye' in Turkish) in 1911.

The land here is flat, watered by the Rıver Çorlu and good soil for farming so until the 1970s Çerkezköy was a pleasant small town in a rural setting. But it is also on the main highway from Istanbul to Europe and in 1971 was designated an area for industrial development. Grants were made available by the Turkish state for investors and a large industrial area was constructed on 4 million m2 of land near the town.

[edit] Çerkezköy today

Today industrial development has spread beyong the originally designated industrial area and all kinds of goods are produced in the hundreds and hundreds of factories in Çerkezköy, including textiles, plastic and rubber goods, paints and chemicals. Prominent manufacturers include the large white goods manufacturers 'Arçelik', and Sabancı Holding's woollen textile factory Yünsa.

Now only 15% of the people work in agriculture and Çerkezköy has a large industrial working class population, living in housing projects sprawled around the fringes of the town. The Caucasusian identity that gave the town its name no longer exists, it has been swamped by an influx of people from all over Turkey. There are jobs here and the town is easily reached by bus from Istanbul.

The town centre is a typical Turkish collection of rows of grey low-rise blocks containing public buildings, small supermarkets, banks, and kebab restaurants, with a square in the middle containing a statue of Ataturk and nearby a large central mosque.

The military base in Çerkezköy is Turkey's biggest centre for basic training in military service. The town is well-equipped with schools, hospitals and other infrastructure.