Hatay Province (, ) is the southernmost province and metropolitan municipality of Turkey. Its area is , and its population is 1,686,043 (2022). It is situated mostly outside Anatolia, along the eastern coast of the Levantine Sea. The province borders Syria to its south and east, the Turkish province of Adana to the northwest, Osmaniye to the north, and Gaziantep to the northeast. It is partially situated on the Cilician Plain, a large fertile plain along the Cilicia region. Its administrative capital is Antakya (ancient Antioch), making it one of the three Turkish provinces not named after its administrative capital or any settlement. The second-largest city is İskenderun (formerly Alexandretta). Sovereignty over most of the province was disputed with neighbouring Syria, which claimed that the province had a demographic Arab majority, and has separated from its territory in violation of the terms of the French Mandate for Syria that was established on the heels of World War I; however, the issue has remained largely dormant since the thawing of Syrian-Turkish relations in the 2000s.
History Antiquity
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.
Medieval era The area was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in 638 and later it came under the control of the Umayyad and Abbasid Arab dynasties. Tulunids 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.William M. Hale Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000 p.45 Routledge, 2000 , 9780714650715 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. 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.Çağatay, Soner. Islam, secularism, and nationalism in modern Turkey: who is a Turk? Volume 4 of Routledge studies in Middle Eastern history. p. 119-120. Taylor & Francis, 2006. ,
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.