Fatsa is a town and a large district of Ordu Province in the central Black Sea region of Turkey.

Etymology

The name Fatsa derives from Fanizan daughter of King Pharnaces II of Pontus and has since mutated through Fanise, Phadsane, Pytane, Facha and today's Fatsa. In the Ottoman Empire records the town as its name Sat?lm??. The Greeks called it also Polemonion and Side.

Geography

The district is a strip of coastline with hills and rocky mountains rising steeply behind, watered by the rivers of Yaprakl? and Belice. The Canik Mountains run parallel to the coast behind Fatsa. The local economy depends on agriculture and fishing: 80% of arable land is planted with hazelnuts (see Corylus avellana) and there are fishing fleets harboured at Fatsa and in the small towns of Yal?köy and Bolaman. Also the Black Sea coastal highway runs through here bringing passing trade. The higher mountain areas of the district are covered in forest. The climate is typical of the Black Sea coast, warm and wet most of the year.

Fatsa itself is a large town of 63,721 people with a large central shopping district of streets, some pedestrianised, leading down to the seafront. The district of Bolaman was once the Roman town of Poleman and has the ruins of a castle and places to drink tea by the water.

Places of interest

The countryside and coast of Fatsa are pretty in spring and summer and a number of places attract visitors including:

• the mineral water springs of Il?ca.
• The Pontus era monastery of Göre?i, 5km west of Fatsa near the...
  • Ç?ng?rt rock and caves
• Gaga lake - 10km south-east of Fatsa
• The ruins of Bolaman Castle

There is a summer festival in Fatsa of sports, a beauty contest etc.

History

The history of Fatsa goes back to antiquity, when the coast was settled by Cimmerians, Persian people and Ancient Greek colonists in the centuries BC, followed by Alexander the Great and his successors. The town grew in importance under the Kingdom of Pontus, particularly during the reign of Pharnaces II the ally of Pompey against Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC, who built the city here. Following the demise of Pontus the area passed into Ancient Rome and Byzantine Empire hands.

Turkish peoples came to the area in the 11th century following the Battle of Manzikert and the Black Sea coast was quickly conquered by the Danishmends emir Sevli Bey, and settled by Turkish immigrants. In the 13th and 14th centuries Genoese traders established trading posts along the coast, Fatsa became one of the most important of these, and there is a stone warehouse on the shore built in this period. The Genoese presence in the Black Sea ended with the fall of Constantinople but Fatsa later thrived again under the Hac? Emir O?ullar? Anatolian Turkish Beyliks in the late 14th century and became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1427.

In the 19th century the population increased as Armenians, Georgians and Caucasus Turks migrated to the coast to escape the wars between Russia and the Ottomans. The Greek Christian community remained and thrived as craftsmen and bureaucrats until the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, when 770 families of Turks from Greece were settled in the town and villages of Fatsa. In this period the town remained a port and trading post, there was no coast road to Ünye or Ordu and the port thrived. Corn, rice and other grains were grown in the hinterland and from the 1920s onwards hazelnuts were planted, when rice growing ceased as the coastal swamps were dried up by irrigation works and the town grew.

In the 1970s Fatsa municipality was controlled by the left wing mayor Fikri Sönmez and his Devrimci Yol organisation of local committees under the slogan "The red sun will rise in Fatsa". A major incident in this period was the kidnapping by the THKO in 1972 of three British technicians from the radar station ?n Ünye. This era ended when, upon the initiative of the MHP supporting provincial governor, the mayor and 300 others were arrested in the "Nokta Operasyonu" of July 1980, two months before the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. ^[1] Throughout this period Fatsa lost a significant number of its people as they migrated away to jobs in Turkey's larger cities or abroad, including a large proportion of the Turkish community in Japan.

Today the municipality is controlled by the Islamist-leaning AKP.

Notable natives

• The legendary bandits Hekimo?lu, murdered in 1910, and Soytaro?lu. Gang leaders during clashes between Turks and Georgians in the 19th century.
• Fikri Sönmez ("Fikri the tailor") - revolutionary left-wing mayor of Fatsa in the 1970s.
• Film actor and symbol of machismo Kadir ?nan?r (b Fatsa 1949 - )
• Singer Mehmet Gümü? -
• Singer Soner Ar?ca (b Fatsa 1966 - )

References

External links

• District governor's official website

de:Fatsa eo:Fatsa hu:Fatsa pl:Fatsa ro:Fatsa tr:Fatsa, Ordu

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