Antiquity in Hatay Province. Settled since the early Bronze Age, Hatay was once part of the
Akkadian Empire, then of the
Amorite Kingdom of
Yamhad. Later, it became part of the Kingdom of
Mitanni, then the area was ruled by a succession of
Hittites and
Neo-Hittite peoples that later gave the modern province of Hatay its name. The Neo-Hittite kingdom of
Palistin was also located here. The area came under the control of
Assyrians (except for a brief occupation by
Urartu), and later the
Neo-Babylonians and the
Persians. The region was the centre of the Hellenistic
Seleucid Empire, home to the four Greek cities of the
Syrian tetrapolis (Antioch,
Seleucia Pieria,
Apamea, and
Laodicea). From 64 BC onwards the city of Antioch became an important regional centre of the
Roman Empire. Among the famous archaeological sites in the province are
Alalakh,
Tell Tayinat,
Tell Judaidah, and
Antioch. briefly ruled it before Abbasid one was restored. From the 10th century onwards, the region was controlled by the
Aleppo-based
Hamdanids after a brief rule of
Ikhshidids. In 969 the city of
Antioch was recaptured by the
Byzantine Empire. It was conquered by
Philaretos Brachamios, a Byzantine general in 1078. He founded a principality from Antioch to
Edessa. It was captured by
Suleiman I, who was Sultan of Rum (ruler of Anatolian Seljuks), in 1084. It passed to
Tutush I, Sultan of Aleppo (ruler of Syria Seljuks), in 1086. Seljuk rule lasted 14 years until Hatay's capture by the Crusaders in 1098, when parts of it became the centre of the
Principality of Antioch. At the same time, much of Hatay was part of the
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, who subsequently allied with the
Mongols and took control of the Principality of Antioch in 1254. Hatay was captured from the Mongol-Armenian alliance by the
Mameluks in 1268, who subsequently lost it to
Timur (Tamerlane) at the start of the 15th century.
Sanjak of Alexandretta By the time it was taken from the Mameluks by the
Ottoman Sultan
Selim I in 1516, Antakya was a medium-sized town on of land between the
Orontes River and Mount Habib Neccar. Under the Ottomans the area was known as the sanjak (or governorate) of Alexandretta.
Gertrude Bell in her book
Syria: The Desert & the Sown published in 1907 wrote extensively about her travels across Syria including Antioch & Alexandretta and she noted the heavy mix between Turks and Arabs in the region at that time. Many say that Alexandretta was traditionally part of Syria. Maps as far back as 1764 confirm this. During the First World War, most of Syria was occupied by the British but under the
Armistice of Mudros, Hatay remained part of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, after the armistice it was occupied by the British, an arrangement which was not accepted by the Ottomans. Later, the province was handed over to France along with the rest of Syria. After World War I and the
Turkish War of Independence, the
Ottoman Empire was disbanded and the modern Republic of
Turkey was created. Alexandretta was not part of the new republic. It was placed under the
French mandate of Syria after the Allies and Turkey signed the
Treaty of Sèvres, which was neither ratified by the
Ottoman parliament nor by the
Turkish National Movement in Ankara. The subsequent
Treaty of Lausanne also put Alexandretta within Syria. The document detailing the boundary between Turkey and Syria around 1920 and subsequent years is presented in a report by the Official Geographer of The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State. A French-Turkish treaty of 20 October 1921 rendered the Sanjak of Alexandretta autonomous, and it remained so from 1921 to 1923. Out of 220,000 inhabitants in 1921, 87,000 were Turks. Along with Turks the population of the Sanjak included:
Arabs of various religious denominations (
Sunni Muslims,
Alawites,
Greek Orthodox,
Greek Catholics,
Maronites);
Jews;
Assyrians;
Kurds; and
Armenians. In 1923 Hatay was attached to the
State of Aleppo, and in 1925 it was directly attached to the
French mandate of Syria, still with special administrative status. Despite this, a Turkish community remained in Alexandretta, and
Mustafa Kemal said that Hatay had been a Turkish homeland for 4,000 years. This was due to the contested nationalist
pseudoscientific Sun Language Theory prevalent in the 1930s in Turkey, which presumed that some ancient peoples of Anatolia and the Middle East, such as the Sumerians and Hittites, hence the name Hatay, were related to the Turks. Whereas, the Turks first appeared in Anatolia during the 11th century, when the
Seljuk Turks occupied the eastern province of the
Abbasid Empire and captured Baghdad. Resident Arabs organised under the banner of Arabism, and in 1930,
Zaki al-Arsuzi, a teacher and lawyer from Arsuz on the coast of Alexandretta published a newspaper called 'Arabism' in Antioch that was shut down by Turkish and French authorities. The 1936 elections returned two MPs favouring the independence of Syria from France, and this prompted communal riots as well as passionate articles in the Turkish and Syrian press. This then became the subject of a complaint to the
League of Nations by the Turkish government concerning alleged mistreatment of the Turkish populations. Atatürk demanded that Hatay become part of Turkey claiming that the majority of its inhabitants were Turks. However, the French High Commission estimated that the population of 220,000 inhabitants was made up of 46% Arabs (28% Alawites, 10% Sunni, 8% Christians), 39%
Turks, 11%
Armenians, while the remaining 4% was made up of
Circassians,
Jews, and
Kurds. The sanjak was given autonomy in November 1937 in an arrangement brokered by the League. Under its new statute, the sanjak became "distinct but not separated" from the
French mandate of Syria on the diplomatic level, linked to both France and Turkey for defence matters.
Hatay State Hatay State (, , ), also known informally as the Republic of Hatay, was a transitional political entity that existed from 7 September 1938, to 29 June 1939, in the territory of the Sanjak of Alexandretta of the French Mandate of Syria. In early March 1939 French authorities were willing to return Hatay Province (then within the French Mandate of Syria) back to Turkey for a quid pro-quo. The quid pro-quo was a willingness to sign a mutual pact (between Turkey and France) against potential European aggression (either Italian aggression or German aggression). The goal of the French was to ensue Turkey did not go into the German-Italian sphere of influence. The state was transformed de jure into the Hatay Province of Turkey on 7 July 1939, de facto joining the country on 23 July 1939.
Hatay Province of Turkey On 29 June 1939, following a
referendum, Hatay became a Turkish province. This referendum has been labelled both "phoney" and "rigged", and is seen as a way for the French to cede the area to Turkey, in the hope that they would turn on Hitler. For the referendum, Turkey moved tens of thousands of Turks into Alexandretta so they could vote. These Turks were born in Hatay but had resettled in Turkey. In two government communiqués which were issued in 1937 and 1938, the Turkish government asked all local government authorities to make lists of all of their employees who were originally from Hatay. Those employees whose names were listed were then sent to Hatay so they could register as citizens and vote. Syrian President
Hashim al-Atassi resigned in protest at continued French intervention in Syrian affairs, maintaining that the French were obliged to refuse the annexation under the
Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence of 1936. The
Hassa district of Gaziantep,
Dörtyol district (
Erzin was nahiya of it) of Adana were then incorporated into Hatay. As a result of the annexation, a number of demographic changes occurred in Hatay. During the six months following the annexation, inhabitants over the age of 18 were given the right to choose between staying and becoming Turkish citizens, or emigrating to the French Mandate of Syria or Greater Lebanon and acquiring French citizenship. If they chose to emigrate, they were given 18 months to bring in their movable assets and establish themselves in their new states. Almost half of the Sunni Arabs left. Many Armenians also left and 1,068 Armenian families were relocated from the six Armenian villages of
Musa Dagh to the
Beqaa Valley which is located in
Lebanon. Many of these Armenians had fled for their lives and settled in the French Mandate of Syria because they were survivors of the
genocide which had previously been committed by the Ottoman Empire. The total number of people who left for Syria was estimated to be 50,000 including 22,000
Armenians, 10,000
Alawites, 10,000
Sunni Arabs and 5,000
Arab Christians.
Turkish–Syrian dispute For much of its premodern history,
Alexandretta, with its capital city
Antioch, was considered as part of
Bilad al-Sham, the area known today as
Syria. In
Ottoman times, Hatay was part of the
Vilayet of Aleppo in
Ottoman Syria. In 1920 the
sanjak (province) of Alexandretta was awarded to Syria by the
League of Nations in the guise of a
French mandate. In 1936 Alexandretta became the subject of a complaint to the League of Nations by
Turkey, which claimed that the privileges of the Turkish plurality in the sanjak were being infringed. (In 1921, there were 87,000 Turks amid a population of 220,000.) Unlike other regions historically belonging to Syrian provinces (such as
Aintab,
Kilis and
Urfa), Alexandretta was confirmed as Syrian territory in the
Treaty of Lausanne agreed upon by
Kemal Atatürk but was granted a special autonomous status because it contained a Turkish plurality. However, culminating a series of border disputes with France-mandated Syria, Atatürk obtained in 1937 an agreement with France recognising Alexandretta as an independent state, and in 1939 this state, called the
Republic of Hatay, was annexed to
Turkey as the 63rd Turkish province following a controversial referendum. Syria bitterly disputed both the separation of Alexandretta and its subsequent annexation to Turkey. Syria maintains that the separation of Alexandretta violated France's mandatory responsibility to maintain the unity of Syrian lands (article 4 of the mandate charter). It also disputes the results of the referendum held in the province because, according to a League of Nations commission that registered voters in Alexandretta in 1938, Turkish voters in the province represented no more than 46% of the population. Syria continues to consider Hatay part of its territory as of the 2010s, and shows it as such on its maps. Under the leadership of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad from 2000 onwards, there was a lessening of tensions over the Hatay issue. Indeed, in early 2005, when visits from Turkish President
Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened a way to discussions between two states. These discussions resulted with the Syrian government agreeing to end its demand that the province should be returned under Syrian sovereignty as a condition to end hostilities; however, there was no official announcement by the Syrians relinquishing their rights of sovereignty. Following changes to Turkish land registry legislation in 2003, a large number of properties in Hatay were purchased by Syrian nationals, mostly people who had been residents of Hatay since the 1930s but had retained their Syrian citizenship and were buying the properties that they already occupied. By 2006, the amount of land owned by Syrian nationals in Hatay exceeded the legal limit for foreign ownership of 0.5%, and
sale of lands to foreigners was prohibited. There has been a policy of cross border cooperation, on the social and economic level, between Turkey and Syria starting in the 2000s. This allowed families divided by the border to freely visit each other during the festive periods of
Christmas and
Eid. In December 2007, up to 27,000 people crossed the border to visit their brethren on the other side. In the wake of an agreement in the autumn of 2009 to lift visa requirements, nationals of both countries can travel freely. However, out of 50 agreements signed between Turkey and Syria in December 2009, the Hatay dispute stalled a water agreement over the
Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers. Turkey asked Syria to publicly recognise Hatay as a Turkish territory before signing on to the agreement. Apart from maps showing Hatay as Syrian territory, the Syrian policy has been to avoid discussing Hatay and giving evasive answers when asked to specify Syrian future goals and ambitions with regard to the area. This has included a complete media silence on the issue. In February 2011, the dispute over Hatay was almost solved. The border separating Syria from Hatay was going to be blurred by a shared Friendship Dam on the Orontes river and as part of this project the two states had agreed on the national jurisdiction on each side of the border. Only weeks before the outbreak of the Syrian uprising and later war, groundbreaking ceremonies were held in Hatay and Idlib. As a result of the Syrian war and the extremely tense Turkish-Syrian relations it brought, construction was halted. As part of the ongoing war, the question of the sovereignty of Hatay has resurfaced in Syria and the Syrian media silence has been broken. Syrian media began broadcasting documentaries on the history of the area, the Turkish annexation and
Turkification policies. Syrian newspapers have also reported on demonstrations in Hatay and on organizations and parties in Syria demanding an "end to the Turkish occupation". However, although the Syrian government has repeatedly criticized the Turkish policies towards Syria and the armed rebel groups operating on Syrian territory, it has not officially brought up the question of Hatay.
2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes Hatay Province was heavily damaged by the
2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes. The province registered 23,065 earthquake-related fatalities and 30,762 injuries. More than 13,500 buildings collapsed, 67,346 were heavily damaged and 8,162 had to be demolished. The most affected areas were
Antakya,
Kırıkhan and
İskenderun. ==Geography==