URLA • HERITAGE
Urla History
From Limantepe and Klazomenai to an Ottoman harbour — and the first resistance in Western Anatolia.
From Limantepe and Klazomenai to an Ottoman harbour — and the first resistance in Western Anatolia.
Urla is more than today’s quiet Aegean town: it rises on one of the longest-lived settlements of the western Anatolian coast. From Limantepe to Klazomenai, from Turkish principalities to an Ottoman harbour and the first spark of the National Struggle, its past is woven from archaeology, seaborne trade and resistance. The account below follows the historical outline shared by Urla Municipality and UKTA.
Limantepe, one of the most important sites on the western Anatolian coast, is unique for its unbroken occupation from the Chalcolithic Age to the end of the Roman period. Decades of excavation have identified seven architectural strata from the Middle Chalcolithic to Late Roman times, producing a chronological sequence of great value for both the settlement and the wider Aegean. The earliest layer is currently dated to the beginning of the 5th millennium BC (Middle Chalcolithic). Finds show that from its oldest cultural levels the town was already a strong port at the heart of overseas trade. With Early Bronze Age urban planning it took on a new scale, and in Classical Antiquity it was known as Klazomenai (Clazomenae).
After the Aegean Sea Peoples migrations around 1200 BC, city-states became centres of civilisation. By the 8th century BC Klazomenai had completed its political formation and joined the system of city-states. From the 6th century BC it faced invasions and uprisings; the people left the mainland town and settled on the offshore island known today as Karantina (Quarantine) Island. The island city appears to have been abandoned in the 5th century AD. Mentioned at the Council of Chalcedon (451), in Hierocles’ lists (c. 530) and in later episcopal records, the settlement of that era may have stood near Gülbahçe, where church ruins and Byzantine inscriptions have been found.
Turks reached the Aegean and İzmir in the 1080s under Çaka Bey, who founded the first Turkish navy and took coastal cities including Klazomenai. His principality dissolved after his death, and Turk–Byzantine struggle continued in western Anatolia for roughly two centuries. With the fall of the Anatolian Seljuk state in 1308, the age of beyliks began. In 1329 İzmir and Urla were annexed to the Aydınoğlu Beylik by Gazi Umur Bey and İbrahim Bahadır Bey. The region passed to the Ottomans in 1390, briefly returned to the beylik after the Battle of Ankara, and came fully under Ottoman rule when Murad II abolished the beylik in 1425–1426.
Under the Ottomans Urla was a major port for domestic and foreign trade. After 1520 Suleiman the Magnificent granted some of Urla’s villages to his mother Hafsa Sultan, who endowed them to the complex she built in Manisa. Kilizman and the central districts were added to the sultan’s personal estates. From the late 16th century seaborne trade declined. As the great admiral Piri Reis noted, one main reason ships stopped calling was that these waters had become a pirate haunt. Even so, olive oil, wine and stone architecture still carry Urla’s Ottoman heritage into the present.
Citing terms of the Treaty of Sèvres after World War I, Greek forces occupied İzmir on 15 May 1919. The first resistance in Western Anatolia began in Urla on the morning of 16 May. Learning of the occupation, some 800 local Rums attacked Turks. Regiment 173 of Division 56 (based in İzmir) was in Urla; its commander, with few soldiers and local people who came to help — about 120 fighters in all — held the line. Fighting lasted through 16–17 May; a ceasefire came on the evening of the 17th. This is regarded as the start of the first Kuvayı Milliye struggle in the West and, though directed at Rum bands rather than the Greek army, as the “first clash” with the Greeks in western Anatolia. From 18 May Urla remained occupied for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days until liberation on 12 September 1922.
After the Great Offensive that began on 26 August 1922 and the victory at Dumlupınar on 30 August, the Greek army retreated. Mustafa Kemal Pasha ordered: “Armies, your first goal is the Mediterranean. Forward!” The pursuit that followed reached İzmir on 9 September. On 10 September Mustafa Kemal and İsmet Pasha arrived with their commanders. When remaining enemy forces fled toward Çeşme to leave Anatolia by ship, Fahrettin (Altay) Pasha of the 5th Cavalry Corps was tasked with clearing the peninsula. Thus began the Urla Peninsula Pursuit, one of the final stages of the War of Independence. Urla was liberated on 12 September 1922.