Adana
(2000 est. pop. 1.1 million). The fifth-largest city of Turkey, Adana is located at the confluence of the Seyhan and Ceyhan Rivers in the rich agricultural plain of Cukurova in southeastern Anatolia. Adana has changed hands often. In 1516 the Ottoman sultan Selim I (1468–1520) took possession of the city during his campaign against the Mamluks. The Ottomans left the administration of this newly conquered territory to local vassals for some years, but in 1608 the territory became a province of the Ottoman empire. In 1833 Adana was ceded in the Treaty of Kutahya to Muhammad Ali Pasha (or Mehmet Ali Pasa, 1769–1849), a rebel Ottoman officer who had succeeded in creating a more or less independent dynasty in Egypt.
The Ottoman empire recovered Adana with the London Convention of 1840, and the city again became a provincial capital in 1867. The city's importance as an agricultural trading center dramatically increased during the American Civil War (1861–1865), when Adana benefited from the sudden shortage of cotton on the international market. As a measure of this increasing importance, a railroad connecting Adana to the Mediterranean port of Mersin was built in 1886, and this line was later included in the Baghdad Railway.
In 1909, Adana was the site of a short-lived Armenian uprising that was brutally suppressed. The French occupied the city in 1919, following the 1918 defeat of the Ottoman empire in World War I. Unwilling to invest the men and moneys necessary to maintain this occupation, however, France ceded the territory to the Turkish Nationalist forces in 1922 at the Treaty of Ankara.
Adana maintains its importance as an agricultural center, and cotton continues to be a significant local crop. Other important crops include oranges, lemons, rice, and sesame. During the Turkish Republic, agriculturally related industries such as textile and vegetable oil production also assumed increasing importance. Adana is home to Cukurova University, founded in 1973. Yasar Kemal (b. 1922), arguably the most famous author of Republican Turkey, was born here and based many of his works on the Turkish and Kurdish folktales of the surrounding countryside.
Further Reading
Cross, Toni M., and Gary Leiser. (2000) A Brief History of Ankara. Vacaville, CA: Indian Ford Press.
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