Yeşilköy

History

The original name, San Stefano, in use until 1926, derives from a legend: in the early 13th century, the ship carrying Saint Stephen's relics to Rome from a Constantinople, sacked by the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, was forced to stop here because of a storm. The relics were taken to a church until the sea calmed down, and this gave the name to the church and to the place. It is still referred to by its original name in Bulgarian and Greek.

In 1203, the beach of Agios Stefanos was the site of disembarkation of the Latin army of the Fourth Crusade, which would conquer Constantinople the following year.

In the 19th century, the whole village was owned by the powerful Armenian Dadyan family.

During the Crimean War, the French forces were stationed here, and built one of the three historic lighthouses of Istanbul still in use. San Stefano was where in 1878 the Russian forces stopped its advance towards Constantinople at the end of the Russo-Turkish War and was the location where the Treaty of San Stefano was signed between the Russian and Ottoman empires. In 1909, the decision to send Sultan Abdülhamid II in exile to Thessaloniki was taken by the members of the Committee of Union and Progress at the Yacht club of San Stefano.

On 10 July 1894, San Stefano – as the whole Marmara region of Constantinople – was hit by a strong earthquake, followed by a tsunami. The sea receded 100 meters from the shore and the following tsunami created giant waves which devastated the coast. The boathouse, the docks and large wooden structures were damaged, many houses were destroyed or damaged and also the train track was severely damaged by the quake.

San Stefano was where the first aviation facilities were built in the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and an aviation school was set up and later developed by German officers to train pilots for the Ottoman Aviation Squadrons.

In 1912, during the Balkan Wars, thousands of soldiers sick because of cholera were brought here, and about 3,000 of them died and were buried near the train station.

Shortly after the Ottomans′ entry into the First World War as Germany′s ally, on 14 November 1914, a monument erected here in 1898 to commemorate the Russian soldiers who died in 1878, was blown up by the Ottoman military as a propaganda event; the demolition is thought to have been filmed by the first Turkish filmmaker Fuat Uzkınay and thus is officially deemed to be the birth of Turkish cinema.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, San Stefano was a favourite coastal resort and hunting place for Constantinople's upper classes, and had a mixed population, made of Turks, Greeks, (now almost completely emigrated), Armenians (who still live there in numbers) and Levantines (Italian and French people, now almost completely emigrated). As a legacy of the district's cosmopolitan character, an Italian mission, an Italian Catholic church and cemetery, Armenian church and Greek churches still exist in the area. All the churches are dedicated to St. Stephen.

In 1926 the village was named Yeşilköy which means "Green Village" in Turkish. It is believed that the writer Halit Ziya Uşakligil who lived there at the time gave this new name to the village.

Yeşilköy today

Yeşilköy – whose population is mainly affluent - retains some notable examples of wooden Art Nouveau houses built between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. It has a Marina - the Yeşilköy Burnu Marina - and sandy beaches.

Istanbul Atatürk International Airport, formerly known as the Yeşilköy Airport, is located in this district. The headquarters of Turkish Airlines are on the property of the airport, and Onur Air has its headquarters in an airport hangar. MyCargo Airlines (formerly ACT Airlines) has its head office in Level 4, Building A3 of the Istanbul World Trade Center (İstanbul Dünya Ticaret Merkezi) in Yeşilköy. Borajet also has its head office in Yeşilköy. When Bestair existed, its head office was in Yeşilköy.

On the waterfront, a small museum dedicated to the village and its minorities has been opened in 2012.

Yeşilköy has a station for the suburban railway line (Banliyö Treni) between Sirkeci and Halkalı. The first station was built in 1871, and contributed to the neighbourhood's boom as a popular resort.

Yeşilköy borders the neighbourhoods of Yeşilyurt to the northeast, and Florya to the southwest.

Miscellaneous

San Stefano Peak on Rugged Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after the settlement, in connection with the Treaty of San Stefano.