Gaziantep, Southeast Anatolia Region, Türkiye

🇹🇷 Gaziantep, previously and still informally called Aintab or Antep, is the capital of Gaziantep Province, in the westernmost part of Turkey's South-eastern Anatolia Region. It is probably located on the site of ancient Antiochia ad Taurum, and is near ancient Zeugma.

The city has two urban districts under its administration, Şahinbey and Şehitkamil. It is the sixth-most populous city in Turkey.

Gaziantep is a diverse city inhabited mostly by ethnic Turks and a significant minority of Kurds and Syrian refugees. It was historically populated by Turkmens, Armenians, Jews, and a plethora of other ethnic groups.

History: Hellenistic period Gaziantep is the probable site of the Hellenistic city of Antiochia ad Taurum ("Antiochia in the Taurus Mountains").

Medieval history During its early history, Aintab was largely a fortress overshadowed by the city of Dülük, some 12 km to the north. Aintab came to prominence after an earthquake in the 14th century devastated Dülük. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, the region passed to the Umayyads in 661 AD and the Abbasids in 750. It was ravaged several times during the Arab–Byzantine wars. After the disintegration of the Abbasid dynasty, the city was ruled successively by the Tulunids, the Ikhshidids, and the Hamdanids. In 962, it was recaptured by the Byzantines, upon the expansion led by Nikephoros II Phokas.

After Afshin Bey captured the fortress in 1067, Aintab fell to Seljuk rule and was administered by Seljuk emirs of Damascus. One of these emirs, Tutush I appointed Armenian noble Thoros of Edessa as the governor of the region.

It was captured by the Crusaders and united to the Maras Seigneurship in the County of Edessa in 1098. The region continued to be ruled by independent or vassalized Armenian lords, such as Kogh Vasil. It reverted to the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in 1150, was controlled by the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia between 1155–1157 and 1204–1206 and captured by the Zengids in 1172 and the Ayyubids in 1181. It was retaken by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in 1218.

With the turn of the 13th-century, Dülük became one of Aintab's dependencies according to geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi. In the next century, Aintab was the capital of its district and a town with fine markets much frequented by merchants and travellers, while Duluk was in ruins, according to Abulfeda. Still, Aintab continued to be hotly contested throughout these centuries.  It was besieged by the Mongols in 1270. 

It repeatedly changed hands between the Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate or the Dulkadirids, a Turkoman vassal state of the Mamluks. Gaziantep was near the southern frontier of the Dulkadir emirate, and on several occasions it slipped out of their control.  The Ilkhans ruled over it between 1260 and 1261, 1271–1272, 1280–1281 and 1299–1317. The Mamluks controlled the city between 1261 and 1271, 1272–1280, 1281–1299, 1317–1341, 1353–1378, 1381–1389. It was unsuccessfully besieged by the Dulkadir leader Sevli Beg in 1390. Although the Mamluks and their Dulkadirid vassals could control the city from 1395 until the Ottoman conquest in 1516, the city was besieged by Timur in 1400, and then in 1420 by the Ak Koyunlu leader Kara Yusuf. 

These attacks all caused destruction and suffering among the local population. But at the same time, the city was "acquiring a reputation as a cultured urban center". Badr al-Din al-Ayni, an Aintab native who became a successful diplomat, judge, and historian under the Mamluks, wrote at the end of the 1300s that the city was called "little Bukhara" because so many scholars came to study there. Ayni also left a firsthand account of the suffering caused during Sevli Beg's siege in 1390. 

Another rough patch for Aintab's people came in the late 1460s, when the Dulkadir prince Şehsuvar rebelled against the Mamluks.  Mamluk forces captured Aintab in May 1468, driving out Şehsuvar's forces; a report by the governor of Aleppo indicates that resistance had been fierce. Just a month later, Şehsuvar recaptured Aintab after four "engagements" with Mamluk forces. After Şehsuvar's final defeat and public execution by the Mamluks in 1473, Gaziantep enjoyed a period of relative peace and stability under his brother and successor Alaüddevle. Alaüddevle appears to have considered Gaziantep an important possession and commissioned several constructions in the city, including a reservoir and a large mosque in the middle of town. The city's fortress was also renovated, completed in 1481. These repairs were likely ordered by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay during his tour of northern Syria in 1477; his name is inscribed above the entrance portal, perhaps symbolically marking his territory.

The end of the Dulkadir principality came around 1515. Alaüddevle refused to fight alongside the Ottomans at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. The Ottomans used this as a pretext to overthrow him, and in June 1515 he was executed.  As Alaüddevle had been a Mamluk vassal, the Mamluks considered this an affront, and the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri mobilized an army and marched north towards Aleppo. 

The conflict over the region meant that in Gaziantep, anxieties about the fate of the city and its surroundings must have been high. Later court records from the early 1540s provide documentary evidence of "dislocation and loss of population" as people fled; this may have been more evident in rural areas than in the city itself. 

Ottoman period The Ottoman Empire captured Gaziantep just before the Battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516, under the reign of Sultan Selim I. In the Ottoman period, Aintab was a sanjak centred initially in the Dulkadir Eyalet (1516–1818), and later in the Aleppo vilayet (1908–1918). It was also a kaza in the Aleppo vilayet (1818–1908). The city established itself as a centre for commerce due to its location straddling trade routes.

Although it was controlled by the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia only between 1155–1157 and 1204–1206, for most of the last two millennia, Gaziantep hosted a large Armenian community. Armenians played a significant role in the city's history, culture, welfare, and prosperity. These communities no longer exist in the city due to the Hamidian massacres in 1895 and the Armenian genocide in 1915.

Gaziantep served a significant trade route within the Ottoman Empire. Armenians were active in manufacturing, agriculture production and, most notably, trade, and became the wealthiest ethnic group in the city, until their wealth was confiscated during the Armenian genocide.

Battle of Marj Dabiq At the beginning of his campaign against the Mamluks in 1516, the Ottoman sultan Selim I brought his army to Gaziantep en route to Syria. The city's Mamluk governor, Yunus Beg, submitted to Selim without a fight and gave him the keys to the castle on 20 August.  The next day, 21 August, Selim set up camp outside the city "with great majesty and pomp" and held meetings with local military commanders to discuss strategy for the upcoming battle.  The fateful Battle of Marj Dabiq took place just days later, on 24 August. Gaziantep, although not an active battle site, thus played a strategic role in the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk sultanate. 

The Ottoman victory at Marj Dabiq had profound consequences for Gaziantep, although its inhabitants had no way of knowing at the time. For the first time in almost 1,000 years, Gaziantep was located in the middle of an empire rather than a contested border region. It lost its strategic importance, but also its vulnerability to attack. For four centuries, until the French occupation in 1921, Gaziantep was relatively peaceful. 

Economic recovery In the short term, though, Gaziantep was still reeling from the instability before (and after) the Ottoman conquest.   During that period, Gaziantep had suffered from "depredation", as well as fear caused by political uncertainty.  Besides political conflict, the city's economic slump at this time can also be partly attributed to a general decline in commerce in the eastern Mediterranean region that caused a general economic downturn in the region in the early 1500s.

Only around the 1530s, when the Ottoman authorities turned their attention to the territories recently conquered from Dulkadir, do cadastral records indicate renewed prosperity in Gaziantep.   An important event was Süleyman the Magnificent's successful Mesopotamian campaign against Safavid Iran in 1534-36, which took Baghdad and increased the security of trade routes in Gaziantep's region.   As with the earlier economic downturn, the renewed prosperity in Gaziantep in the 1530s was part of a broader regional pattern of economic growth during this period.

As a disclaimer – some of this apparent economic growth may be an artifact of using tax documents as a source. Tax assessors may have simply been doing more accurate counts in later surveys, or the government might have been applying more strict scrutiny as their control increased. Part of this was deliberate – the Ottomans had a policy of lowering taxes in recently conquered territories, both to placate locals and to provide an economic stimulus to help war-torn areas recover. Later, as their control solidified, the authorities would raise taxes again. According to Leslie Peirce, this seems to have been the case in Gaziantep – tax rates in 1536 were significantly lower than the rates in 1520, which she assumes were the pre-Ottoman rates. The rates went up again in the 1543 survey, which she interprets as the Ottomans raising taxes again in the meantime.

Administrative changes The Dulkadir emirate didn't simply go away immediately after the Ottoman victory at Marj Dabiq. It stuck around as an Ottoman vassal until 1522, when the last Dulkadir ruler "resisted discipline by the Ottoman administration". The Ottomans had him executed and officially dismantled the Dulkadir principality, annexing its territories to the empire to form the beglerbeglik of Dulkadir.  

Despite being part of the former Dulkadir territories, though, the sanjak of Gaziantep was initially put under the beglerbeglik of Aleppo instead of Dulkadir. This indicates how, just as in the Mamluk period, Gaziantep was then seen more as part of northern Syria than as part of Anatolia. The area was "culturally mixed", and many locals were bilingual in Turkish and Arabic (as well as other languages). Gaziantep's cultural and economic ties were mostly with Aleppo, which was a major international centre of trade.  

At some point in the 1530s, Gaziantep was moved into the beglerbeglik of Dulkadir, whose capital was Maraş. Even though it was now administratively part of Dulkadir, Gaziantep remained commercially more connected to Aleppo.  

17th through 19th centuries The 17th-century Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi noted it had 3,900 shops and two bedestens.

In 1818, Gaziantep was moved back into the Aleppo province.  

By the end of the 19th century, Aintab had a population of about 45,000, two-thirds of whom were Muslim—largely Turkish, but also partially Arab. A large community of Christians lived in the Armenian community. In the 19th century, considerable American Protestant Christian missionary activity occurred in Aintab. In particular, Central Turkey College was founded in 1874 by the American Mission Board and largely served the Armenian community. The Armenians were systemically slaughtered during the Hamidian massacres in 1895 and later the Armenian genocide in 1915. Consequently, the Central Turkey College was transferred to Aleppo in 1916.

Turkish period After the First World War and Armistice of Mudros, Gaziantep was occupied by the United Kingdom on 17 December 1918, and it was transferred to France on 5 November 1919. The French Armenian Legion was also involved in occupation. In April 1920 irregular Turkish troops known as Kuva-yi Milliye besieged the city, but the 10-month-long battle resulted in French victory. Around 6,000 Turkish civilians were killed in the process. On 25 December 1921, Treaty of Ankara was signed and as a result the French evacuated the city.

The French made the last attempt to revive the Armenian community in the city during the Siege of Aintab, where the Armenians who fled the genocide were promised their homes back in their native lands. However, on 25 December 1921, the Treaty of Ankara was signed, and as a result, the French evacuated the city.

According to Ümit Kurt, born in modern-day Gaziantep and an academic at Harvard's Center for Middle East Studies, "The famous battle of Aintab against the French … seems to have been as much the organised struggle of a group of genocide profiteers seeking to hold onto their loot as it was a fight against an occupying force. The resistance … sought to make it impossible for the Armenian repatriates to remain in their native towns, terrorising them [again] to make them flee. In short, not only did the local … landowners, industrialists, and civil-military bureaucratic elites lead to the resistance movement, but they also financed it to cleanse Aintab of Armenians". The same Turkish families who made their wealth through the expropriation of Armenians in 1915 and 1921/1922 continued to dominate the city's politics through the one-party period of the Republic of Turkey.

In 2013, Turkey, a member state of NATO, requested deployment of MIM-104 Patriot missiles to Gaziantep to be able to respond faster in a case of military operation against Turkish soil in the Syrian Civil War, which was accepted.

Geography The city is located on the Aintab plateau.

Economy Gaziantep is famous for its regional specialities: copperware and "Yemeni" sandals, specific to the region, are two examples. The city is an economic centre for Southeastern and Eastern Turkey. The number of large industrial businesses established in Gaziantep comprise four percent of Turkish industry in general, while small industries comprise six percent. Also, Gaziantep has the largest organised industrial area in Turkey and holds first position in exports and imports. The city is the centre of the green olive oil-based Nizip Soap industry.

Traditionally, commerce in Gaziantep was centre in covered markets known as 'Bedesten' or 'Hans', the best known of which are the Zincirli Bedesten, Hüseyin Pasha Bedesten and Kemikli Bedesten.

Gaziantep also has a developing tourist industry. Development around the base of the castle upgrades the beauty and accessibility to the castle and to the surrounding copper workshops. New restaurants and tourist-friendly businesses are moving into the area. In comparison with some other regions of Turkey, tourists are still a novelty in Gaziantep and the locals make them very welcome. Many students studying the English language are willing to be guides for tourists.

Gaziantep is one of the leading producers of machined carpets in the world. It exported approximately US$700 million of machine-made carpets in 2006. There are over 100 carpet facilities in the Gaziantep Organized Industrial Zone.

With its extensive olive groves, vineyards, and pistachio orchards, Gaziantep is one of the important agricultural and industrial centres of Turkey.

Gaziantep is the centre of pistachio cultivation in Turkey, producing 60,000 metric tons (59,000 long tons; 66,000 short tons) in 2007, and lends its name to the Turkish word for pistachio, Antep fıstığı, meaning "Antep nut".

Gaziantep is the main centre for pistachio processing in Turkey, with some 80% of the country's pistachio processing (such as shelling, packaging, exporting, and storage) being done in the city. "Antep fıstığı" is a protected geographical indication in Turkey; it was registered under this status in 2000.

In 2009, the largest enclosed shopping centre in the city and region, Sanko Park, opened, and began drawing a significant number of shoppers from Syria.

Ties between Turkey and Syria have severely deteriorated since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Museums The Gaziantep Museum of Archaeology has collections of ceramic pieces from the Neolithic Age; various objects, figures and seals from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages; stone and bronze objects, jewellery, ceramics, coins, glass objects, mosaics and statues from the Hittite, Urartu, Greek Persian, Roman, Commagene, and Byzantine periods.

The Zeugma Mosaic Museum houses mosaics from Zeugma and other mosaics, a total of 1,700 square metres (18,000 sq ft). It opened to the public on 9 September 2011.

The Hasan Süzer Ethnography Museum, a restored late-Ottoman stone building, has the old life style decoration and collections of various weapons, documents, instruments used in the defence of the city as well as the photographs of local resistance heroes. It was originally built in 1906 as the home of Garouj Karamanoukian.

Some of the other historical remains are the Zeugma (also called Belkıs in Turkish), and Kargamış ruins by the town of Nizip and slightly more to the north, Rumkale.

Yesemek Quarry and Sculpture Workshop is an open-air museum located in the village known by the same name, 30 km (19 mi) south of the town of Islahiye. It is the largest open-air sculpture workshop in the Near East and the ruins in the area date back to the Hittites.

The Gaziantep Defence Museum: before you enter the Panorama Museum located within the Gaziantep Castle, you encounter the statues of three local heroes Molla Mehmet Karayılan, Şehit Mehmet Kâmil and Şahin Bey at the entrance. As you enter the museum, you hear the echoes: "I am from Antep. I am a hawk (Şahin)". The Gaziantep War Museum, in a historic Antep house (also known as the Nakıpoğlu House) is dedicated to the memory of the 6,317 who died defending the city, becoming symbols of Turkey's national unity and resolve for maintaining independence. The story of how the Battle of Antep is narrated with audio devices and chronological panels.

Gaziantep Mevlevi Lodge Foundation Museum The dervish lodge is part of the mosque's külliye (Islamic-Ottoman social complex centred around a mosque). It was built in the 17th century. The Mevlevi Lodge Monastery is entered via a courtyard which opens off the courtyard of the mosque.

Emine Göğüş Cuisine Museum Gaziantep is known for its cuisine and food culture. A historical stone house built in 1904 has been restored and turned into the Emine Göğüş Cuisine Museum. The museum opened as part of the celebrations for the 87th anniversary of Gaziantep's liberation from French occupation.

Education The main campus of Gaziantep University is located 10 km (6 mi) away from the city centre. The institution acquired state university status in 1987, but had already offered higher education since 1973 as an extension campus of the Middle East Technical University. It is one of the largest universities in Turkey, boasting 27,000 students.

Hasan Kalyoncu University (Hasan Kalyoncu Üniversitesi) is a private university established in 2008. Currently, the university has five faculties, three institutes and three vocational schools.

Zirve University (Zirve Üniversitesi) was a private university established in 2009. As of 2016, the university had five faculties. The university was closed by the government in 2016 and its facilities transferred to Gaziantep University.

The youngest university in Gaziantep is Sanko University (Sanko Üniversitesi). Established in 2013, Sanko University is the first "thematic university" in Turkey.

Transport The city is served by Oğuzeli Airport, which has commercial flights to domestic and regional international destinations. The city is served by Turkish State Railways which operates the Gaziantep Railway Station in the city centre.

Gaziantep has a three line light rail system called the Gaziantep Tram. The Gaziantep Tram consists of three lines, is 35 km long and carries 75,000 passengers daily. The system opened in 2011 and was extended in 2012 and 2014.

Gaziray is a commuter rail line serving Gaziantep, Turkey. Being 25 km (16 mi) long, the line is the fourth largest commuter rail system in the country. The system is also a part of major upgrades along the Mersin-Adana-Osmaniye-Gaziantep railway corridor. There are a total of 16 stations on the 25.532 km (15.865 mi) long Gaziray line, two of which are underground, all of which are suitable for disabled access.

Urban planning The historical core of Gaziantep is located on the Alleben Creek to the north and with heights to the south.   The location of the city among these heights was likely because of their defensibility.

Historically, the main trade axis was the route from the castle then going south-east along the road to Aleppo. A number of hans were built along this street. Due to the hot climate, the city's streets were very narrow in order to maximize shade from the buildings. Orientation of buildings was important so they couldn't see into each other's courtyards (an important private space, especially for women) and so that they wouldn't block sunlight from neighboring houses.

Generally, the city's population was organized according to ethno-religious groups who lived close together in the same neighborhood.   Around the time of World War I, the city's population was divided between Muslims in the east and non-Muslims (mostly Armenians) in the west.   Muslims lived in the Karagöz, Çukur, Tıslaki, and Şekeroğlu districts; Armenians lived in the Akyol and Bey districts; and Jews lived in the Düğmeci and Karagöz districts.  

An early city planning effort took place in 1891 under Mustafa Ağa, the first mayor of Gaziantep, involving a city plan and province map. According to Kuyucu and Özer, though, the resulting maps and plans are unavailable. Another early city plan for Gaziantep was drawn up by Barsumyan and Nazaryan in the early 1920s, during the Turkish War of Independence. The Barsumyan-Nazaryan plan included an airport for the city but omitted any railway connections. During this period, because the Jewish and Armenian communities had left the city during the war period, the city did not expand into new areas; instead, now-vacant neighborhoods were used to meet new demand.