Biography of a port city of the republican era: Mersin

Abstract

It can be said that the spatial and functional facilities, goods–products and service capacities and relational networks of port towns are related with the potentials and dynamics of their hinterland and foreland. So, it can be seen that it is an important dynamic for the foundation and development process of port towns to have the developed commercial and production centers in their hinterland. It can be given such as Aleppo–İskenderun, Jaffa–Jerusalem and Beirut–Damascus in East Mediterranean Basin for these relations between port cities and their hinterland. From this point view, the foundation and development of Mersin as a port town can be related with the developed agricultural production and commercial centers with its hinterland like Konya and Adana. Accordingly, the main dynamic for the foundation and development process of Mersin as a port town had been the docks constructed in order to be able to the transferring and distribution of goods-products of their hinterland to their foreland. In this framework, it should be seen that firstly, the docks were built in order to get contact between foreign markets and hinterland, afterwards, Mersin was founded and developed as a port town. The aim of this paper is to examine their spatial and functional development (and change) process of Mersin in the historical process depending on the economic dynamics and spatial necessities of the identity of the port town. It will be considered that these examinations obtained from the case of Mersin contributes both academically and institutionally to efforts on Turkish port towns is to determine their spatial and their functional development strategies in order to integrate the global system as the regional hub port cities. © 2024, Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.