Turgutlu

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For the township that carries Turgutlu's former name (Kasaba) in Kastamonu Province in northern Turkey, see Kasaba.
Turgutlu
Turgutlu main square (Kozapazarı)
Turgutlu main square (Kozapazarı)
Location in Turkey
Overview
Region Aegean Region, Turkey
Province Manisa Province
Coordinates NA
Postal code 45x xx
Licence plate code 45
Website http://www.turgutlu.bel.tr/

Turgutlu is a town and a district of Manisa Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. Its name derives from the name of the Turkish clan of "Turgut" that had come down from the surrounding mountain regions and had been made to settle at the actual location of the town in the Gediz plain during the reign of Murad II who, it should be recalled, had resided in his favorite town of nearby Manisa on two occasions during his rule, and for rather long periods.

The city is alternatively called, Kasaba (often spelled as Casaba or Cassaba in the 19th century Western sources also) among inhabitants of Manisa and İzmir provinces, which simply means "the town". And the people of Turgutlu often use "Kasabalı", especially between each other, to describe their hometown. Despite the general signification of these terms (Kasaba being the "town", and Kasabalı, the "townspeople"), people around Turkey usually understand that Turgutlu is being specifically referred to.

Contents

[edit] History

The town acquired regional importance once it became the terminus of the 93 km. French-operated railway that had started to be consructed in partance of İzmir in 1863. İzmir-Kasaba railway (the town was alternatively called Kasaba during the Ottoman period) was the third railway line built in the Ottoman Empire, and the second in Ottoman Asia, completed a few months later in the same year of 1866 as the rival line of İzmir-Aydın built by the British. As such, Turgutlu became the hub for the agricultural produce of the fertile Gediz plain. It was made a kaza (a district center) in 1868, comprising, in the town itself, a population of 25000 (with around 22000 Muslims, the rest being Greeks or Jews), as well as 2 separate municipalities within the district (Urganlı and Derbent) and 33 villages.

Turgutlu remained under Greek occupation between 29 May 1919 and 7 September 1922. The most bitter blow suffered by the town has been the fire started by the retreating Greek army on 5 September 1922, and which has lasted for two whole days, destroying 6127 buildings in a total of 6328, the historic Pasha Mosque, and the 20000 manuscript books preserved in the town library, as well as at the very least a thousand human lives (based on the corpses that could be counted). The survival of another historical monument, the Hacı Zeynel Mosque and of the surrounding small agglomeration is locally still interpreted as divine intervention. [1]

[edit] Industry

Turgutlu has been reconstructed from the scratch and is today an industrial base structured under the Chamber of Industry founded in 1926. It is home to the production installations of Tukaş, one of the most prominent producers of canned food (mostly vegetables and fruits) in Turkey, as well as of the Turkish branch of the vehicle giant BMC. The town's industrial sector as a whole displays as high a degree of dynamism as its agricultural production, with many small- and medium-sized enterprises active in various fields. Experimental mining of nickel in Mount Çal (Dağı) near Turgutlu started in 2005. The reserves, estimated to reach 38 million tons according to Mike Oxley, the project manager for Bosphorus Nickel, a subsidiary of European Nickel PLC, could deeply influence the district's economy with a potential to become one of the most important investments in Turkey's Aegean Region, although environmental concerns remain. [2]

[edit] Mehter bands

Turgutlu Mehter Ottoman military band (actually "bands", since there are seven separate associations, the first established in 1966, although each collaborates closely with others and all are known under their hometown's name in the outside world) has/have earned fame and distinction around Turkey and beyond. Mehter bands came to provide full-time occupations for up to 400 people in current terms.

[edit] Notable people from Turgutlu

Gen. Hilmi Özkök, the former (till August 2006) Chief of Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces is from Turgutlu.

[edit] Source

[edit] References

Turgutlu townsfolk (the Kasabalı) during the 1935 general census
Turgutlu townsfolk (the Kasabalı) during the 1935 general census
  1. ^ James Loder Park, the U.S. Vice-Consul in İstanbul at the time, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation in the western Anatolian cities and towns he has seen, as follows: "Manisa...almost completely wiped out by fire (...). Cassaba (present day Turgutlu) was a town of 40,000 souls, 3,000 of whom were non-Moslems. Of these 37,000 Turks only 6,000 could be accounted for among the living, while 1,000 Turks were known to have been shot or burned to death. Of the 2,000 buildings that constituted the city, only 200 remained standing. Ample testimony was available to the effect that the city was systematically destroyed (...). Kerosene and gasoline were freely used to make the destruction more certain, rapid and complete. (...) The percentages of buildings destroyed in (...) Manisa [was] 90 percent, [in] Cassaba (Turgutlu) 90 percent, [in] Alaşehir 70 percent, [in] Salihli 65 percent. The burning of these cities was not desultory, nor intermittent, nor accidental, but well planned and thoroughly organized. (...) Without complete figures, (...) it may safely be surmised that 'atrocities' [consisting of murder, torture and rape] committed by retiring Greeks numbered well into thousands in the four cities under consideration."
  2. ^ [1]
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[edit] External links

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