Kırklareli

Local handicrafts

In our area, until the middle of the 20th century, weaving, cart making (taliga making), woodwork, dyeing and pottery were very common, as were, in the days before tractors when oxen and horses were used in farming, the making of yokes and zelve (yoke pins), saddlery, farriery, çarık (rawhide sandal) making and clog making. Today almost all of these have disappeared; apart from 1 pottery workshop in the province, local weaving in the village of Poyralı in Pınarhisar, and a hand-broom workshop, the old handicrafts have lost their importance and vanished.

In our area, in every settlement including the province centre, districts and villages, girls make for their trousseaux wool socks and çetik on five needles; needle lace and shuttle lace worked with a crochet hook on the edges of headscarves and kerchiefs; bedspread sets; television, fridge, side-table, display-cabinet and table covers; wool mats; and wool kitchen napkins and cloths. Young girls also make clothes for the groom from wool or sheep's fleece to put in their trousseaux, such as gloves, shawls, sweaters, jumpers, cardigans, socks and skullcaps. Some poor and elderly women also make some of these handicrafts and sell them for money.

In our area, until the middle of the 20th century, almost every village had looms, and everyone wove what they needed: towels, aprons, çarpana weavings, cloth, floor spreads called pala, kilims, prayer rugs (namazlah) and felemen cloth. With the modernisation and mechanisation of everything, these looms have disappeared today. When you go to the villages and look at the animal sheds, granaries and toilets, you can see that some parts of these looms have been used as timber in building them. Despite the mechanisation and modernisation of everything, local weaving is still done today in the town of Alpullu in Babaeski and the village of Poyralı in Pınarhisar. Until 2000 weavings called çul, çultar and çimdik were still made, if only a little, in the villages of Devletliağaç, Malkoçlar and Tatlıpınar in Kofçaz and Armutveren and İncesırt in Demirköy, but today (2014) these weavings are no longer made either. Çimdik and çultar were woven to be spread on the floor and sat on, and çul to cover animals.

In the villages of Kofçaz and Demirköy in particular, şayak (homespun woollen cloth) woven from sheep's fleece and goat hair, used to make trousers and jackets and the shepherd's coat called "kebe", was very widely made, but with the arrival of factory-made fabric this şayak production also came to an end. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who came to our province on 20 December 1930, liked these şayak weavings very much, asked about them and wanted them to spread.

Until recently (the early 2000s), in our province, in the town of Kavaklı in the central district and the village of Armutveren in Demirköy, young girls wove carpets on hand looms to traders' orders, but today these too have disappeared. From these pieces, paid by the piece, the village girls earned a little money for their own trousseaux.

As part of the public cultural education courses planned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to keep alive and promote our handicrafts that are dying out across the country, to prevent their decline and loss, and to pass them on to future generations by teaching them faithfully and training staff and masters, a course called "Poyralı Village Weavings" was opened in 2007 in the village of Poyralı in Pınarhisar, Kırklareli. The course, started in the village's disused primary-school building, lasted 250 hours and trained 21 women under the instruction of Resmiye Gökerbüyük, born in Poyralı in 1946, who learned weaving from her grandmother. During the course, weaving saddlebags, runners, prayer rugs and cushion covers was taught and learned. Some of the looms used in the course were wooden looms inherited from the trainees' grandparents, and 10 were looms made by a carpenter working in the village as exact copies of the old looms.

The cotton yarn for the warp and the yarn for the weft and patterns used in the Poyralı village weaving were bought from a wool dealer in the centre of Pınarhisar. The trainees from this course continue weaving at their homes in Poyralı and sell what they weave to those interested.

Inspired by the women who learned to weave on this course and started weaving, other women in Poyralı asked us to open another course, so another course was opened in 2010. This course was also taught by Resmiye Gökerbüyük, and a total of 15 trainees learned to weave.

In Poyralı weaving is done only by women and young girls, on looms in their homes. In the time left over from daily housework and fieldwork, they set up looms in a corner of the house in winter and a corner of the garden in summer and weave, both to use their spare time and to earn some money.

In Poyralı weavings the warp thread, called eriş, is black. White, red, yellow, green, blue, cream, purple, black and light and dark tones of the primary colours are used in the weft and pattern threads. Black is preferred for the warp because many colours can be used in harmony on it. The weavings are shuttle weavings; no beater comb (kirkit) is used.

Until the 1980s our province was, together with Edirne, one of the biggest broom-producing provinces in the country; today (2014) 10–15 broom workshops remain. Because these workshops cannot sell their brooms at the price they want or sell all they make, this craft too is dying out.

Our province had nearly 30 pottery workshops until the 1970s; as of 2014, 1 pottery workshop remains. Its owner, master potter Hüseyin Çokan, says:

"I'll close this workshop, but since there's no other master making pottery, I'll keep going as long as my health allows. This craft will disappear with me."

A field survey carried out in Lüleburgaz in 2014 found that:

- In the centre, crafts such as glass decoration, ceramics, woodcraft (spoon and walking-stick making), quilt making and farriery are still practised.

Source: http://www.kirklarelienvanteri.gov.tr/halk-kulturu.php?id=43

Kırklareli has been settled since prehistory. Finds from the mounds east of the Aslıbey road, between the villages of Aşağıpınar and Eriklice, prove that Kırklareli is a very old place of settlement. Tilkiburnu Höyük, identified most recently in 1981 during surveys led by Prof. Dr Mehmet Özdoğan, head of the Prehistory Department of the Archaeology Department at Istanbul University's Faculty of Letters, shows that settlement in Kırklareli goes back to the Late Chalcolithic. It lies 18 km south of Kırklareli on the east bank of the Şeytandere, a tributary of the Ergene.

People are thought to have first come to Thrace about a million years ago, and this long period of cultural history, accepted as lasting until fourteen thousand years ago, is called the "Old Stone Age" or the "Hunter-Gatherer Period". Throughout this period a diet based on hunting and gathering edible plants and fruit and a nomadic way of life prevailed, and no permanent shelters were built. Over this very long period, Thrace's climate changed significantly along with the world's climate, and climatic periods ranging from dry cold to wet heat followed one another in the region for tens of thousands of years.

As the world's climate came close to today's conditions, about 8,000 years ago Thrace's natural environment and vegetation also took on features similar to today's, and people adapted to the changing environment with their developing technologies. This change began in Anatolia about 10,000–12,000 years ago. For the first time people cultivated grains such as wheat, barley and lentils, domesticated animals such as sheep, goats, cattle and pigs and began farming, and built the first permanent houses of wood, mudbrick and stone. But these developments appear to have begun later in Thrace, with its very rich natural resources, than in Anatolia, about seven thousand years ago.

As an important civilisation of Eastern Europe and north-western Anatolia, the Thracians represented an important and original culture over the long period of their existence. However, unlike the classical world, where writing was widely accepted, the Thracians, like the Celts, Scythians and Cimmerians, appear not to have adopted writing. But seen within these cultures' own perception and world view, this takes on a different meaning.

The rebellious attitude of the Thracian communities, which never seem to have been brought under discipline, continued during the anti-Persian alliances formed around the Ionian city-states and Athens in 499 BC and during the struggles between the Persians and the Greek cities.

Under the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I (802–811), farm owners living in the Anatolian provinces were made to sell their property. To protect the border regions, some of these people were settled in the Kırklareli area and were required to do military service as "stratiotes" (soldier-farmers). In the 850s Emperor Michael III forcibly deported to Thrace the Paulicians, who lived around Malatya and were fighting against Byzantium alongside the Muslim Arabs. The Bulgarian king Simeon besieged the Byzantine capital twice, in 913 and 924. The lands of Kırklareli were invaded twice. In 1064 the Uzes, who came down into the Balkan peninsula under pressure from the Cumans living on the plains of southern Russia, overran Bulgarian–Macedonian lands and Thrace in wave after wave, but a great epidemic stopped this invasion. In 1122 the Pecheneg Turks, defeated by a Byzantine–Cuman alliance, crossed the Danube southwards into Macedonia and Thrace. But many Pechenegs, defeated and taken captive by Emperor John II, were settled in Byzantine lands, Thrace among them.

The first sources that give information about the conquest of Kırklareli are works written in the 16th and 17th centuries. So it is not possible to give the date of the conquest of Kırklareli with certainty from the available sources. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that Kırklareli was conquered after Edirne, in the time of Murad I and under the sultan's own command. The conquest probably took place between 1367 and 1372.
The Ottomans called the city Kırk Kilise. Various views have been put forward about what this name means. It should be said, however, that none of these views has won general acceptance. Even so, the view that it was translated as Kırk Kilise from Saranta Eklesiai, meaning the Church of the Forty Saints, is more widely accepted than the others. The name Kırkkilise was changed to Kırklareli by Law No. 537, passed on 20 December 1924, on a proposal by Fuat Umay, member of parliament for Kırklareli.

Kırklareli began to be settled right after the Turkish conquest. With the Mongols' entry into Anatolia in particular, the Türkmens and Yörüks fleeing ahead of them had created a population density in western Anatolia. As the Ottomans crossed into Rumelia and made conquests there, Türkmens and Yörüks were moved to Rumelia to settle empty areas, and the region was soon populated.

In the early Ottoman period Kırklareli was administratively a kaza centre attached to the sanjak of Vize; later it became a sanjak of the eyalet of Rumelia. With the founding of the eyalet of Özi in the first half of the 17th century, Kırklareli was attached to that eyalet. Kırklareli, which remained a sanjak until the 19th century, appears as a kaza attached to Edirne in 1292 (1875). In 1304 (1886/87) it was administered as a sanjak. With the administrative reforms of the Republican period, the sanjak system was abolished and Kırklareli became a province.

Looking at Kırklareli, it can be said that the city developed as described above. The tapu tahrir (land and tax register) of the first half of the 16th century, which records the city's population data, shows 6 neighbourhoods in the city. During the First Balkan War, which began after the agreement made by Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece and Serbia in October 1912, the Kırklareli area was occupied by the enemy and lived through perhaps the worst days in its history.

After the First World War, with the Armistice of Mudros signed on 30 October 1918, the Entente Powers began preparing to establish control over Kırklareli and all of Thrace. On 4 November 1918 a French regiment held the Sirkeci–Uzunköprü–Hadımköy line, began attacking the Turkish villages around the railway and also stationed a detachment in Lüleburgaz. In response to this occupation, an organisation called the Trakya Paşaeli Müdafaa Heyet-i Osmaniyesi (Ottoman Defence Committee of Thrace and Paşaeli) was founded on 2 November 1918. At a meeting held in Istanbul on 22 January 1919 a series of decisions was taken for the liberation of Thrace, and accordingly it was decided to begin the necessary steps at every level to remove the Greek soldiers in Eastern Thrace (Edirne–Kırklareli–Tekirdağ) from the region. Şevket Dingiloğlu attended this meeting representing Kırklareli.

Some time after the Sivas Congress of September 1919, the "Trakya Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti" (Society for the Defence of the Rights of Thrace), founded to liberate Thrace by force of arms, brought the patriots of Thrace together. At the congress held in Lüleburgaz on 31 March 1920, an executive committee was accepted to set a firm stance against the occupiers and implement the decisions taken, and Ankara was informed. On 3 April 1920 Mustafa Kemal sent a telegram to the congress wishing it success. An enlarged "Thrace Congress" was held in Edirne on 9–13 May 1920. There it was decided to resist the occupation and to appoint Cafer Tayyar Pasha to the National Forces Command.

General mobilisation was declared on 25 May 1920. As the organising movements spread, the Greeks landed troops in Tekirdağ on 20 July 1920, advanced quickly and took Edirne on 25 July. A few days before the occupation of Edirne, the headquarters of the Trakya Paşaeli Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti had moved to Kırklareli. With the Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, Thrace was occupied by the Greeks. This spurred preparations for the War of Independence. The Trakya-Paşaeli Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti, whose leadership had scattered for a while during the occupation, regrouped, sped up its arming and attached itself to the Ankara government. The struggle for independence had now begun. From April 1922 hit-and-run attacks with armed bands began. Meanwhile 3 resistance detachments acting independently were raiding the enemy deep inside Eastern Thrace. These actions, which went on until September, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. Finally, with the Armistice of Mudanya signed on 12 October, Edirne, Tekirdağ and Kırklareli were left to the Ankara government. The Greeks began evacuating the occupied areas from 15 October. Under the agreement, Vize and Saray were handed to the Italians and Lüleburgaz and Kırklareli to the French, to be passed on to the Ankara government.

On 23 October 1922 a protocol was signed between the Allied High Commissioners and Refet Pasha, who had been sent to Istanbul to take over Eastern Thrace. It set dates for the evacuation of Eastern Thrace province by province and town by town and settled the evacuation terms. Şakir (Kesebir) Bey, appointed governor of Edirne, crossed to Thrace and took part in the handover. Starting with the Italian zones, Şakir Kesebir took over the whole of Eastern Thrace. The Turkish flag was raised first in Vize and Demirköy (2 November), then in Lüleburgaz (8 November), Babaeski (9 November) and finally in Kırklareli on 10 November 1922.

Source: http://www.kirklarelitso.org.tr/kirklarelinin-tarihcesi/

Kırklareli can be reached by road, rail and air. For those who prefer the road, there are bus services almost every day from big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, İzmir and Antalya. From the bus station you can find minibuses to all its districts. Kırklareli is reached by rail on the Istanbul–Edirne line. Although there is no airport within Kırklareli's borders, people coming from Ankara or Antalya can fly to Çorlu Airport, 110 kilometres away, and reach the city from there. This is because there are regular, free bus services from the airport to the centre of Kırklareli.

Industry in Kırklareli is largely concentrated along the D-100 highway, especially in Lüleburgaz. 87 per cent of industrial plants are in the Merkez, Babaeski and Lüleburgaz districts. The leading sectors are food and drink, textiles, chemicals, and mineral products such as glass.

Notable plants include the Alpullu Sugar Factory, Danone, Trakya Cam and Eczacıbaşı Pharmaceuticals. Alpullu is known as Türkiye's first sugar factory.

The main farm products are cereals, sunflowers, sugar beet, maize, pulses and grapes. The province accounts for about 12 per cent of Türkiye's sunflower crop. On the coast, fishing is carried on at İğneada, Kıyıköy, Beğendik and Limanköy.