Brief History

Antakya, known biblically as Antioch (Antiocheia) and more recently as Hatay, is the chief town of the frontier province of the very same name in southeastern Turkey. The province lies about 30 km from the Mediterranean in the alluvial plain of the Asi (the ancient Orontes) at the foot of Mount Habib Neccar (ancient Mons Silpius), and it is surrounded by large expanses of olive groves.

Antakya, known biblically as Antioch (Antiocheia) and more recently as Hatay, is the chief town of the frontier province of the very same name in southeastern Turkey. The province lies about 30 km from the Mediterranean in the alluvial plain of the Asi (the ancient Orontes) at the foot of Mount Habib Neccar (ancient Mons Silpius), and it is surrounded by large expanses of olive groves.

Antakya was founded as Antioch in the fourth century BC by Seleucus Nicator, one of the four generals between whom the empire of Alexander the Great was divided. It soon grew, and by the second century BC it had developed into a multi-ethnic metropolis of half a million – one of the largest cities in the ancient world and a major staging post on the newly opened Silk Road. It also acquired a reputation as a centre for all kinds of moral excess, causing St Peter to choose it as the location of one of the world’s first Christian communities, in the hope that the new religion would exercise a restraining influence. Indeed, the patriarchy of Antioch became one of the five senior official positions in the organization of the early Christian Church.

Despite being razed by earthquakes during the sixth century AD, Antioch maintained its prosperity after the Roman era. Only with the rise of Constantinople did it begin to decline. In 1098, after a vicious eight-month siege and a savage massacre of Turks, the Crusader kings Bohemond and Raymond took the city in the name of Christianity. They imposed a Christian rule that lasted until Antioch was sacked by the Mamluks of Egypt in 1268. By the time the Ottomans, under Selim the Grim, took over in 1516, Antioch had long since vanished from the main stage of world history. At the start of the twentieth century, the city was little more than a village, squatting amid the ruins of the ancient metropolis. After World War I, Antakya, along with most of the rest of the Hatay, passed into the hands of the French, who laid the foundations of the modern city.

The climate conditions being conducive to productivity, the fertile Antakya region has been luring migrants to the region throughout history. The city was also famous as a center of artistic, scientific and commercial activities in the Hellenistic world, a few remnants of which still remain. Iron is still mined in this area and Hatay is an important transportation link between Syria and other parts of Turkey. The most convenient ports for suitable routes to Mediterranean from Mesopotamia are also located in this region. With its current faith tourism centers, ancient cities steeped in history and beautiful landscapes, the province of Hatay is off the beaten track, but a detour definitely worth its while.

Hatay Province: is a province in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast. The administrative capital is Antakya (Antioch), and the other major city in the province is the port city of Iskenderun (Alexandretta). It is bordered by Syria to the south and east and the Turkish provinces of Adana and Osmaniye to the north. The province is part of Cukurova (Cilicia), a geographical, economical and cultural region that covers the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye, and Hatay. There are border crossing points with Syria in the district of Yayladağı and at Cilvegözü in the district of Reyhanlı. Legitimacy over the province remains disputed with neighbouring Syria, which claims that the province was separated from itself against the stipulations of the French Mandate of Syria in the years following Syria's independence from the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Though the two countries have remained generally peaceful in their dispute over the territory, Syria has never formally renounced its rights to it.

Antiquity: Settled since the early Bronze Age, Hatay was once of the Akkadian Empire, then the Amorite Kingdom of Yamhad and Mitannis, then a succession of Hittites, the Neo-Hittite "Hattena" people that later gave the modern province of Hatay its name, then the Assyrians (except a brief occupation by Urartu) and Persians. The region was the center 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.

Islamic era: The area was conquered by the armies of Islam in 638 and came under the control of the Ummayad and Abbasid Arab dynasties. From the 11th 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 it became the centre of the
Principality of Antioch. Hatay was captured from the Crusaders by the Mameluks in 1268.

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 2 km² 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. A map published circa 1911 highlighted that the ethnic make up (Alexandretta) was majority Arab with smaller communities of Armenians and Turks.

Many consider that Alexandretta had been traditionally part of Syria. Maps as far back as 1764 confirm this. During the First World War in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated most of Syria was occupied by the British forces. But when the armistice of Mudros was signed at the end of the war, Hatay was a still part of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless after the armistice it was occupied by the British forces an operation which was never accepted by the Ottoman side. Later like the rest of Syria it was handed to France by the British Empire. Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor, early 20th Century, Historical Atlas, 1911.

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 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 were related to the Turks. Accordingly, some original inhabitants of Southern Turkey including those surrounding Antakya were of Hittite ancestry, hence the name Hatay. Resident Arabs organised under the banner or Arabism, and in 1930, Zaki Alarsuzi, 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. 
Turkish borders according to the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923

Atatürk demanded that Hatay become part of Turkey claiming that the majority of its inhabitants were Turks. 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.

Republic of Hatay
On 2 September 1938, as the Second World War loomed over Europe, the assembly proclaimed the Republic of Hatay. The Republic lasted for one year under joint French and Turkish military supervision. The name "Hatay" itself was proposed by Atatürk, and the government was under Turkish control. The president Tayfur Sökmen was a member of Turkish parliament elected in 1935 (representing Antalya), and the prime minister Abdurrahman Melek was also elected to the Turkish parliament (representing Gaziantep) in 1939 while still holding the prime-ministerial post.
Turkish forces under Colonel Şükrü Kanatlı entered İskenderunon July 5, 1938.

Hatay Province of Turkey: In 1939 (June 29), following a popular referendum, Hatay became a Turkish province. This referendum has been labelled both "phoney" and "rigged", and a way for the French to let Turks take over the area, hoping that they would turn on Hitler. France eventually came to oppose Turkish control of Hatay. The French provided arms to groups opposed to Turkish control including Kurdish Hoybûn, Armenian Tashnak organizations, and Assyrians. They also tried to collaborate with Alawis and Circassians against Turks. 

On the other hand, the Turkish government, too, made efforts to collaborate with other ethnic groups, especially the Alawis, whom they considered part of the Turkish community in Hatay. Together with the Alawis, Turks constituted a majority of the population in Hatay. The Turkish government gained the support of the Alawis by arguing that their lives would be better in the Turkish Republic than in the French mandate of Syria. They promoted the example of Alawis living elsewehere in Turkey, especially in Adana. Turkish efforts to cooperate with Alawis bore fruit and some Alawis registered themselves as Turks for the elections. The Ankara government also collaborated with Circassians in Hatay, who were by then well integrated into Turkish society. 

For the referendum, Turkey crossed tens of thousands of Turks into Alexandretta to vote. These were Turks born in Hatay who were now living elsewhere in Turkey. In two government communiqués in 1937 and 1938, the Turkish government asked all local government authorities to make lists of their employees originally from Hatay. Those who listed were then sent to Hatay to 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 and Dörtyol district of Adana were then incorporated to the province in order to increase the Turkish proportion of the population. The result was a flight of many Arabs and Armenians to Syria.

Turkish–Syrian dispute: In Ottoman times, Hatay was part of the Vilayet of Aleppo in Ottoman Syria. After World War I, Hatay (then known as Alexandretta) became part of the French Mandate of Syria. 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; although it was granted a special autonomous status because it contained a large Turkish minority. However, culminating a series of border disputes with France-mandated Syria, Atatürk obtained in 1937 an agreement with France recognizing 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, and shows it as such on its maps. However, Turkey and Syria have strengthened their ties and opened the border between the two countries.

Protests in Damascus in 1939 by women demonstrators against the secession of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, and its subsequent joining into Turkey as the Hatay Province. One of the signs reads: "Our blood is sacrificed for the Syrian Arab Sanjak.

Syrians hold the view that this land was illegally ceded to Turkey by France, the mandatory occupying power of Syria in the late 1930s. Syria still considers it an integral part of its own territory. Syrians call this land Liwa' aliskenderun (Arabic: لواء الاسكندرون‎) rather than the Turkish name of Hatay. Official Syrian maps still show Hatay as part of Syria.

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, it was claimed that the Syrian government announced it had no claims to sovereignty concerning Hatay any more. On the other hand, there has been 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 co-operation, on the social and economic level, between Turkey and Syria in the recent years. 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 recognize Hatay as a Turkish territory before signing on to the agreement.