Mersin
(2000 est. pop. 1.8 million). Mersin means "myrtle" in Turkish, and the city took its name from this tree. In 1852, when it was first incorporated, Mersin was inhabited by a cosmopolitan mixture of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians. In the 1950s it was designated as a strategic access harbor for the fertile floodplain of the Euphrates River and a transshipment point on the eastern Mediterranean. However, successive governments placed increasing emphasis on and directed capital to the GAP (Southeast Anatolian) project to harness the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and Mersin slipped into a social and economic vacuum. Too new a city to benefit from the well-structured Ottoman civic administration that gave stability to other Turkish cities and towns, Mersin easily adapted to alternative cultures. By 1999 most of the projected advantages had not come to fruition.
In 1989 the government made an effort to settle nomadic peoples from the surrounding plains (yürüks) in Mersin. Much of their pasture land had been reclaimed and their traditional seasonal livelihood curtailed due to ethnic clashes between Turkish government forces and rebel Kurdish insurgents. However most of the resettled population could not adapt to city life and soon found easier alternatives outside the law.
Further Reading
Dalrymple, William. (1990) In Xanadu. London: Flamingo Books.
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