Country Turkey Post code 2553x Area 1,094 km² Province Erzincan Province | Elevation 1,130 m (3,710 ft) Website www.kemaliye.bel.tr Local time Sunday 2:26 AM | |
Weather 4°C, Wind SE at 11 km/h, 99% Humidity | ||
Kemaliye (formerly Eğin) (Armenian: Ակն, Romanized Old Armenian: Akn, meaning "spring") is both a town in and one of the nine districts of Erzincan Province in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey.
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Map of Kemaliye, 24600 Kemaliye%2FErzincan, Turkey
The town is known for its historic architecture, including many Ottoman-era houses. It is also notable for its commanding view of the river Karasu (Euphrates) flowing south through a gorge above the Keban dam.
History
In 1813, James Playfair's "A System of Geography" described Eğin as "[A] little town in the form of an amphitheatre, at the foot of a mountain, in a fruitful tract that reaches to the Euphrates."
The British explorer Francis Rawdon Chesney followed the course of the Euphrates for a survey expedition between 1835 and 1837, and mentions Eğin as "a town of 2700 houses on the right bank". In comparison, he counts about 3000 houses in Erzincan and 2923 families in Malatya. Chesney describes Eğin's situation in a deep valley where the "mountains rise to about 4000 feet on each side of this singular fissure, which is so narrow that it is crossed by a bridge between lofty limestone precipices seeming to overhang the town and as it were to threaten its destruction."
In 1895, the British geographer Charles William Wilson describes Eğin as follows in a travel guide to Asia Minor.
An Ottoman historian Vahakn Dadrian reports that in 1896, the town was evenly divided between Armenians and Muslims (Turks and Kurds). He says that Eğin was notable for its prosperity and had previously escaped the 1895–1896 Hamidian massacres through a ransom payment by the Armenians of 1500 Turkish gold pounds. However, British archaeologist David George Hogarth writing for the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica noted a massacre of Armenians in Eğin on November 8, 1895.
By 1911, Hogarth described Eğin as an important town in the Mamuretülaziz Vilayet "...picturesquely situated in a theatre of lofty, abrupt rocks, on the right bank of the western Euphrates, which is crossed by a wooden bridge. The stone houses stand in terraced gardens and orchards, and the streets are mere rock ladders."
On 21 October 1922, following the Turkish War of Independence, a decree was issued renaming Eğin as Kemaliye (and Selinti as Gazipaşa) in honor of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The former name is still known and used locally and sometimes even beyond. Kemaliye was administered as part of Elazığ Province until 1926, and within Malatya Province between 1926 and 1938. In 1938 it was transferred to Erzincan Province.
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey (Greek: Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, Turkish: Mübâdele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey, had as result the evacuation of Egin from its Armenian-speaking Greek Orthodox minority population, inhabited there. After a most difficult journey of 8 months and more than a thousand kilometres, they reached the shores of Aegean and were transported (after various stations) in Diavata, near Thessaloniki and Kastaniotissa (new Egin), at the Greek island of Evia.