Bilecik City
Bilecik is the only province in Turkey that has lands in 4 geographical regions. Although it is connected to the Marmara region, it also has lands in the Aegean Region, Central Anatolia Region and Black Sea Region. Bilecik was built around the Sakarya river. It has fertile lands with its abundance of ponds and streams. Except for the center of Bilecik, it has 7 districts, 7 towns and 243 villages.
Bilecik History
Bilecik in Ancient Times
The province, whose political and cultural development is parallel to that of Anatolia in general, remained in the Hittite region in the 2nd millennium BC, and then in the Phrygian dominance regions in 1200 BC. In this process, Bilecik became a rapidly developing settlement due to its mining trade and being a transit point between Thrace and Anatolia. The name of the Sakarya river, which gave life to the region during the Phrygians, is known as Sangarios (the great river god). The region where Bilecik is located was named as Phrygia Epictetos, the country of the Thracian Bithynians.
Bilecik During the Ottoman Empire Period
After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Bilecik was conquered by the armies of the Seljuk Kutalmışoğlu First Süleyman Shah, the conqueror of Anatolia and the founder of the Anatolian Turkish state; In the First Crusade, Bilecik was taken by Byzantium again. A part of the Kayılar, a tribe of the Seljuks (an oba with 400 tents), moved to the west under the rule of Ertuğrul Gazi and came to the town of Söğüt and its surroundings. Bilecik remained under Ottoman rule until the period of Yıldırım Bayezid, but as a result of Bayezid's defeat to Timur in the Ankara field war in 1402, it came under the rule of Timur for about 2 months and was taken back by Çelebi Sultan Mehmet. After this date, Bilecik gradually developed during the Ottoman rule, but the fact that the area where the city was established was not suitable for settlement prevented its rapid development.
Mehmet Pasha Caravanserai-2
Bilecik During the War of Independence
The Treaty of Sèvres, the outlines of which were decided at the San Remo Conference on April 24, 1920, was given to the Ottoman Government for review on May 11, 1920. In order to facilitate the acceptance of the treaty and to implement the provisions of Sèvres, with the encouragement and support of the Entente States, the Greek army attacked in Anatolia and Thrace on 23 June 1920. With the successive occupation of Bursa, Balıkesir, Uşak and Nazilli, the main purpose of this attack was to ensure the implementation of Sevres and not to allow any change in the treaty articles.
Bilecik in the Republican Era
Bilecik, which came out with great wounds from the War of Independence, started the Republican period very weakly due to the social and economic collapse caused by the war. The people of Bilecik participated in the War of Independence with all their existence, and gave tens of thousands of children to both our militia forces and our regular armies. Bilecik was burned and destroyed by the War of Independence; It came out as a complete wreck. The city population, which was estimated at 12,000 in the 1920s, dwindled to 4,000 after the war.
Where Did the Name of Bilecik Province Come From?
Among the old known names of the province, we see Agrilion and Belekome. prof. Dr. Bilge UMAR makes the following statement about the name Agrileion / Belo Kome / Bilecik in his book “Bithynia”: “We can see with absolute confidence that the essence of the name Agrilion/Agrileion is Akr(a)-ilion. This signifies the meaning of 'the throat of the peaks'. We know that the last Byzantine name of the settlement, which is the ancestor of the city of Bilecik, was Belo Kome. That is, there is no hesitation about the localization of that kome (village); The village is mentioned in the work of the historian Pachymeres. But the name Belo has no meaning in that language. According to Ramsay (p.227 No.17), the name Belo Kome is an adaptation of the Turkish name Bilecik to the Greek dialect. However, the word Bilecik has nothing to do with Turkish except for the -cik suffix at the end. It has no meaning in Turkish. The name Bele Kome (pronounced Vilo Komi) is cited as Bele Kome in some of our information sources, for example (State publication) in the Bilecik article of the Turkish Encyclopedia. It is natural that the name of Bele (Vile) is first Vile-cik and then Bilecik from the Turkish dialect. The name must have come from the Thracian Bithyn language or the Phyrgian (again Thraki) language. Indeed, a castle in the province of Thrake (Thrace) of the Byzantine Empire, founded during the reign of Justinian (527–565), was called Beledina.”