Hatay-City of Toleration

 

Hatay is located at the southern part of Turkey on the Mediterranean cost. The province was annexed from the Ottoman Empire by France after World War I. In 1938, the province declared independence from France and the following 29 June, the parliament of the newly-declared republic voted to join Turkey in 1939.

I first visited Hatay in 2005 during a photography trip of AFSAD-Ankara Photographers’ Association. Then, I visited Hatay last year with my family…. I love this city a lot… And, I have very good reasons for this…

First of all, it is a city of tolerance… It is unbelievable there are a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds… Muslims, Arabic, Armenian, and Christian are living together… Our guide was a member of AFSAD and he was Arabic origin… It is possible to hear a lot of people speaking Arabic around you in Hatay… And, the people are so friendly. For example, I and my friends were taking pictures on the streets of the city, and then we saw a lady carrying pastry from stone oven to her house. Even though she didn’t know us, she insisted us to eat from the pastry when she saw us… The pastry was very vey delicious. Actually, it is a tradition in Anatolia, sharing and offering your food to others. One interesting tradition is that people generally cook their food in stone ovens in Hatay. This tradition is not common in most of the other parts of Turkey… It is also possible to buy your meat of kebap (kagit kebabi) from butcher, and cook it in the stone oven so cheaply in Hatay. So, butcher prepares your kebap for free….Since these kinds of things are not common in Ankara, I was surprised when I first learnt… It is very good to see in some parts of Turkey old traditions are keep going…

  

Me and oranges at the garden of catholic church

( Do you know during the whole year, there is always flower on the orange tree)

The Hatay Museum deserves a particular interest, in that it houses one of the richest collections of Roman mosaics in the world. The mosaics are unbelievable there… Most of the mosaics depict characters from Roman mythology.

 

(Christianity's first church in the world)

Hatay is an important center for faith tourism, and is also one of the four great Patriarchate centers in the world. I visited the first church of Christianity there. This cave church is the place where St.Peter preached and founded the Christian community. It was declared as a holy place by Vatican in 1983.

The food is unbelievable in Hatay…. My English is not enough to convey my thoughts… I have never eaten such delicious foods in my life. I believe that the tolerance and energy of the city affects the food. When I visited there second time, I and my family went to Sultan Restaurant which is very popular restaurant… And, it was full of Syrian people who came with buses from Syria daily…

Some appetizers
 

Hatay's kunefe very traditional delicious dessert,  icli kofte (some kind of meatball)

and of course kebap:)

Moreover, there is also an Armenian village in Hatay called as 'Vakifli Village' which is the unique Armenian village in Turkey. I think Armenia Diaspora should visit this village to see how Armenian people live in peace in Turkey… The people have their church in the village, and the village is amazing. They are producing orange in that village in an organic way, so the taste of the orange was like a sugar…

Harbiye Promenade area is also amazing, it very popular of producing silk scarves, daphne soap, pomegranate sour etc…

Hatay is the city where I would like to live for the end of my life… I hope I can live in that city after I retired…