Fatsa is a municipality and district of Ordu Province, Turkey.[ Büyükşehir İlçe Belediyesi , Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 19 September 2023.] Its area is 363 km2,
Name
The oldest recorded name of the town is Polemonion (, Latinized as Polemonium), after Polemon I of Pontus. A derivative of Polemonion, i.e. Bolaman, is the modern name of the river passing through Fatsa (the river is the ancient
Sidenus).
The present name, Fatsa, has been influenced by
modern Greek Φάτσα or Φάτσα Πόντου (φἀτσα is derived from
Italian language faccia), which translates as "face or housefront on the sea", but has in fact mutated from Fanizan, the name of the daughter of King Pharnaces II of Pontus, through Fanise, Phadisana (),
[Friedrich Heinrich Theodor Bischoff, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der alten, mittleren und neuen Geographie, 1829] Phadsane
[Richard J. A. Talbert, Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World,] Phatisanê
[Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, Description historique et géographique de l'Asie Mineure, comprenant les temps anciens, le moyen age et les temps modernes, avec un précis détaillé des voyages qui ont été faits dans la péninsule, depuis l'époque des croisades jusqu'aux temps les plus récents; précédé d'un tableau de l'hstoire géographique de l'Asie, depuis les plus anciens temps jusqu'à nos jours.] Vadisani (), Phabda,
[Anthony Bryer and David Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1985: ), p. 111.] Pytane, Facha, Fatsah
into today's Fatsa. Apart from Polemonion, another Greek name of the town was Side.
[Putzgers, F.W., Historischer Schul-Atlas, Bielefeld, 1929]
History
Antiquity
The history of Fatsa goes back to antiquity, when the coast was settled by
Cimmerians, and
Pontic Greeks in the centuries BC. The ruins on Mount Çıngırt (the ancient rock tombs and vaults) are from this period.
Roman and Byzantine periods
Fatsa was first mentioned, in the era of the Kingdom of Pontus, as
Polemonium, after King Polemon I, the Roman
client state appointed by
Mark Antony. Under
Nero, the kingdom became a Roman province in AD 62. In about 295,
Diocletian (r. 284–305) divided the province into three smaller provinces, one of which was Pontus Polemoniacus, called after Polemonium, which was its administrative capital.
As the Roman Empire developed into the Byzantine Empire, the city lost some of its regional importance. Neocaesarea became the capital of the province, and the Diocese of Polemonion was a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Neocaesarea.[DIMITRI KOROBEINIKOV (2003): Orthodox Communities in Eastern Anatolia in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.1 Part 1: The Two Patriarchates: Constantinople and Antioch, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 15:2, 197-214] Due to partition of the Byzantine Empire as a result of the Fourth Crusade, Fatsa became a part of the Empire of Trebizond in 1204.
In the 13th and 14th centuries Genoese traders established trading posts on the Black Sea coast.[ Rakova Snezhana, "Genoese in the Black Sea", Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Black Sea] Fatsa became one of the most important of these ports. There is a stone warehouse on the shore built in this period.
Ottoman period
Following the conquest of the Empire of Trebizond by the Ottomans in 1461, Fatsa become a part of Rûm Eyalet and later a part of
Trebizond Eyalet of the
Ottoman Empire and remained within the Sanjak of Janik until the collapse of the Empire in 1921. Fatsa
became a district of Ordu Province, following the formation of the
Turkey in 1923.
Archaeology
In 2020, archaeologist discovered ruins of a church at the bottom of the lake Gaga.
[ Ruins of church discovered on bottom of lake]
Discovered in 2021, the ruins of a monastery dedicated to Saints Constantine and Helena and dating back to the 5th or 6th century were excavated in the following years.[ Mosaic unearthed in a byzantine monastery in Turkey]
Population movement
Following the Turkish conquest of
Anatolia by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and later by the Ottomans, Muslim settlers arrived at Fatsa in the middle of the 14th Century.
[David Winfield et al., Some Byzantine Churches from the Pontus, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 12 (1962), pp. 131-161] The early Muslim
Turkish people settlers included
Turkmen people, whose descendants make up the majority of Fatsa's current
Alevi community.
[Morgül Kerem, A History of Social Struggles in Fatsa 1960-1980, Boğaziçi University, 2007.] In 1999, a religious worship complex that serves to both Alevis and
Sunni Islam was opened in Fatsa, which was unprecedented in Turkey.
In the second half of the 19th century, Fatsa's Sunni Islam population increased significantly, as some of Chveneburi (Sunni Muslim Georgians) from Batumi and Kobuleti (Turkish: Çürüksu), who fought in the Ottoman army against the Russian Empire forces in Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) under Ali Pasha of Çürüksu[Donald Presgrave Little et al., Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, Brill Academic Pub; First Edition (April 1, 1991), ] who were forced to leave their ancestral land in North Caucasus after the end of the Caucasian War in 1864, were settled in Fatsa and in the surrounding villages. The Circassian immigrants had an immediate impact on the local economy by introducing silk production to the area. In 1868, 3 million worth of silk was sold in Fatsa.
During the Byzantine period, as early as the 9th century, an Orthodox diocese was located in Fatsa ( Diocese of Polemonion).[Léon Maccas, L’Hellenisme de L’Asie – Mineure, Paris, 1919, s: 83.] who thrived as craftsmen and bureaucrats. According to the last Ottoman census carried out in 1914, the Christians made up 12% of Fatsa's total population of 40,339.[Meir Zamir (1981): Population statistics of the Ottoman empire in 1914 and 1919, Middle Eastern Studies, 17:1, 85-106][Tableaux indiquant le nombre des divers elements de la population dans l'Empire Ottoman au 1 Mars 1330 (14 Mars 1914), Constantinople] After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Fatsa's Christian population diminished. The last Pontic Greek community left Fatsa in 1923 as a part of the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey, when 770 Muslim families from Thessaloniki, Greece were settled in Fatsa and the indigenous Pontic Greek population of Fatsa were settled in Katerini and in the village of Trilofos Himachal, both in the Pieria region of Greece. Two members of Fatsa's Pontic Greek community, after the population exchange in 1923, became politicians in Greece; Alexander Deligiannidis, born in Fatsa in 1914 served in the Greek Parliament as a member of National Radical Union Party (1956 - 1964) and Takis Terzopoulos, born in Fatsa in 1920 served as the mayor of Katerini (1964 - 1967).
The book titled Literary Publications, Testimonials and Narratives in Pieria (1918 - 2010) (Greek: Λογοτεχνικές εκδόσεις, μαρτυρίες και αφηγήσεις στην Πιερία) includes chronicles of some of Fatsa's Pontic Greeks on their exodus from Fatsa to Katerini, including an anecdotal account by Chalkidis Ef. Theophilus (Greek: Χαλκίδης Ευθ. Θεόφιλος) (b. Fatsa in 1900 - d. Katerini 1985).
In 1919, in Fatsa, there were 8 churches (Greek Orthodox, Greek Evangelical and Armenian Apostolic) served by 9 priests.[Maccas, Léon, L'hellénisme de l'Asie-Mineure son histoire, sa puissance (1919)] After the departure of the last Christian community in 1923, the churches were closed and later demolished.
Politics
Social unrest in 1970s-1980s
During the social unrest in Turkey in the 1970s, a major international incident in the area was the kidnapping of three
NATO engineers (two
United Kingdom, one
Canadians) from the Ünye radar station in 1972 by the members of People's Liberation Army of Turkey,
[San Mateo Times /Thursday, March 30, 1972 /Page-1] which had a support base in Fatsa.
In 1976, Nazmiye Komitoğlu was elected as the mayor of Fatsa, who was the first female mayor elected in the Black Sea region of Turkey. Following her death in office,[ENGİN BOZKURT, THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE LOCAL GOVERNMENT EXPERIENCES IN TURKEY: THE CASE OF HOZAT MUNICIPALITY, MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, 2011] Fikri Sönmez, a local Chveneburi,[TÜRKMEN, HADE, RADICALISATION OF POLITICS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: THE CASE OF FATSA DURING THE LATE 1970s, MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, 2006] Sönmez and his Marxist–Leninist organisation Devrimci Yol, which was made up by local committees under the slogan "The red sun will rise in Fatsa", controlled the municipality until 11 July 1980.[SÜMERCAN BOZKURT, THE RESISTANCE COMMITTEES: DEVRIMCI YOL AND THE QUESTION OF REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION IN TURKEY IN THE LATE 1970s, MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, 2008]
After his election as the mayor, Sönmez divided Fatsa into eleven regions and created people's committees, which had power to recall government authorities.
This era ended when, upon the initiative of the Nationalist Movement Party supporting the provincial governor, the
Turkish military conducted an operation called Operation Target (Turkish: Nokta Operasyonu) against the town.["Bir Yerel Yönetim Deneyi" by Pertev Aksakal (Simge Yayınevi) 1989]
Throughout this turbulent period, Fatsa lost a significant number of its people as they migrated away to jobs in Turkey's larger cities or abroad. Immigrants from Fatsa constitute the largest proportion of the Turkish community in Japan.
Current
The current mayor of Fatsa is İbrahim Etem Kibar from the conservative AK Party.
Geography and climate
Fatsa is located on a strip of coastline between the
Black Sea and the Janik Mountains (Turkish:
Canik) and watered by the rivers of
Elekçi,
Bolaman,
Yapraklı and
Belice. Fatsa has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen:
Cfa); warm and humid in summer, cool and damp in winter, with occasional - but sometimes heavy - snowfalls.
Composition
There are 89
mahalle in Fatsa District:
[ Mahalle , Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 19 September 2023.]
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Ahmetler
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Arpalık
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Aşağıardıç
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Aşağıtepe
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Aşağıyavaş
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Aslancami
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Ayazlı
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Bacanak
-
Bağlarca
-
Bahçeler
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Başköy
-
Beyceli
-
Bolaman
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Bozdağı
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Bucaklı
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Buhari
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Bülbülköy
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Büyükkoç
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Çömlekli
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Çöteli
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Demirci
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Dereyurt
-
Dolunay
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Duayeri
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Düğünlük
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Dumlupınar
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Eskiordu
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Evkaf
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Fatih
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Geyikçeli
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Gölköy
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Güvercinlik
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Hacıköy
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Hamlık
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Hatipli
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Hıdırbeyli
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Hoylu
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Ilıca
-
İnönü
-
İslamdağ
-
Kabakdağı
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Kaleönü
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Karataş
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Kargucak
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Karşıyaka
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Kavraz
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Kayaca
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Kayaköy Akçakese
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Kılavuzömer
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Kılıçlı
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Konakbaşı
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Kösebucağı
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Küçükkoç
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Kulakköy
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Küpdüşen
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Kurtuluş
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Mehmetakif
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Meşebükü
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Mustafa Kemalpaşa
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Oluklu
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Örencik
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Palazlı Kömürlük
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Sakarya
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Salihli
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Saraytepe
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Sazcılar
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Sefaköy
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Şerefiye
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Sudere
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Tahtabaş
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Taşlıca
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Tayalı
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Tepecik
-
Uzundere
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Yalıköy
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Yapraklı
-
Yassıbahçe
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Yassıtaş
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Yavaş
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Yenidoğan
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Yenikent
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Yenipazar
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Yeniyurt
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Yeşilköy
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Yeşiltepe
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Yukarıardıç
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Yukarıbahçeler
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Yukarıtepe
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Yusuflu
Economy
The local economy depends on agriculture and fishing. In the early 20th century, the town thrived as a port and trading post, as there was no coastal road to in the region. There are fishing fleets harboured at the port in Fatsa and in the small districts of Yalıköy and
Bolaman (
Polemonium) and in the hamlet of Belice, which forms a natural harbour. The Black Sea Coastal Highway runs through Fatsa bringing passing trade.
Before the 20th century, maize and rice were the main grains grown in the hinterland. From the 1920s onwards, the coastal swamps were dried up by irrigation works, rice growing ceased and the town grew. During this time, hazelnuts were introduced to the area. About 80% of arable land is planted with Corylus avellana. The higher mountain areas of the district are covered in forest.
Places of interest
The countryside and coast of Fatsa are lush in spring and summer time. A number of places in and around the town attract visitors, including;
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The Belice rock on sea
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The ruins of the Pontic Greek Göreği Monastery, 5 km west of Fatsa
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Mount Çıngırt ancient rock tombs and vaults
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Lake Gaga - 10 km south-east of Fatsa
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The ruins of Bolaman Castle and the Haznedaroğlu mansion
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Town's promenade
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The mineral water springs of Ilıca
The annual Fatsa Çınar Festival was used to be held in July which included concerts, sports competitions, a beauty contest and various other activities. The last festival was held in 2008.
Notable natives
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Hekimoğlu İbrahim - Folk hero and outlaw who was involved in the skirmishes between the local Chveneburi (Muslim Georgian people) and Turks in the early 20th century
[BOA DH. MTV 55/48.] (b. Fatsa ? - d. Fatsa 1918)
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Soytaroğlu İsmail - Folk hero and outlaw who was involved in the skirmishes between the local Chveneburi and Turks in the early 20th century (b. Vona ? - d. Ordu 1923)
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Alexander Deligiannidis (Αλέξανδρος Δεληγιαννίδης) (b. Fatsa 1914 - Thessaloniki, Greece 1969) - Ethnic Pontic Greek from Fatsa. Served in the Greek Parliament as a member of the National Radical Union Party.
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Takis Terzopoulos (Τάκης Τερζόπουλος) (b. Fatsa 1920 - d. Katerini, Greece 1989) - Ethnic Pontic Greek from Fatsa. Served as a mayor of Katerini in Greece.
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Fikri Sönmez ("Fikri The Tailor") - Revolutionary, mayor of Fatsa. Ethnic Chveneburi (b. Fatsa 1938 - d. Amasya 1985)
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Ali Poyrazoğlu - Actor and director, who spent his childhood in Fatsa
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Dursun Ali Akınet - Folk poet, ethnic Chveneburi
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Kadir İnanır - Actor and director (b. Fatsa 1949 - )
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Erdoğan Arıca - Football player and coach (b. Fatsa 1954 - d. Istanbul 2012)
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Mehmet Gümüş - Singer
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Eyüp Fatsa - Politician, member of the Turkish Parliament
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Levent İnanır - Actor (b. Fatsa 1962 - )
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İlhan Saygılı - Diplomat, served as the Consul General of Turkey in Frankfurt, Germany until 2011.
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Soner Arıca - Model and singer (b. Fatsa 1966 - )
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Moody E. Prior - (1901-1996) - Ethnic Pontic Greek- Birth name Papadapolous- Northwestern University professor of the Humanities and English and an authority on Shakespeare - Dean of the Graduate School
[Northwestern University Archival and Manuscript Collections ]
External links
