Edremit, Van
Edremit is a municipality and district of Van Province, Turkey. Its area is 515 km2, and its population is 127,819. In the 2013 reorganisation, part of the former central district of Van was attached to Edremit District. It covers the southern part of the agglomeration of Van and the adjacent countryside. The district's central town, which has the same name, is situated on the coast of Lake Van at a distance of from the city of Van.
Name
The Armenian name for Edremit is Artamet, which is traditionally associated with the name of the Greek goddess Artemis, who is identified with the Armenian goddess Anahit. In pre-Christian times, a temple to Anahit existed in Artamet. In various historical sources, the settlement has also been called Artamat, Artamida or Avan, while its fortress has been called Zard. Some authors identify the settlement with the site known as Artashesyan or Artavanyan Avan, although, according to Tadevos Hakobyan, this is incorrect. The medieval Armenian historian Tovma Artsruni, referring to a folk tradition, writes that Artamet means 'Artashes's entrance' or 'Artabanes's entrance', as if composed of the first part of those names and the Armenian word 'entrance'. According to another interpretation, based on the form Artamat, the name means 'Artashes came', as if the ending is the root of the Persian word 'to come'.According to one source, Edremit is to be identified with the settlement of Alniuni mentioned in Urartian inscriptions. Edremit has also been called Sarmansuyu in later centuries, because of the Menua Canal, popularly known as the Shamiram or Shamran canal, that runs through the town. The form Edremit appears as early as the 17th century, in the work of the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi.
History
The site of the town of Artamet has been settled since ancient times. In the time of the Urartian Kingdom, the Menua Canal was built through the modern-day Edremit district and passes through the town itself. Many of the Urartian inscriptions which mark the canal are located in the Edremit district. The canal continued to irrigate the fertile gardens of the district into the 19th century. The settlement served as a summer residence for the Armenian kings of antiquity. Within the Kingdom of Armenia, Artamet was located in the Tosp district of the Vaspurakan province. The medieval Armenian historian Tovma Artsruni claims that Artamet was founded by the 2nd-century BC Armenian king Artaxias I for his queen Satenik. Artamet was the site of a temple to the goddess Anahit; after the Christianization of Armenia, the temple was turned into a church. Until the end of the 8th century, Artamet was one of the possessions of the Armenian noble house of Rshtuni. Afterwards, it was owned by the Artsruni dynasty. Artamet grew significantly under the Artsruni-ruled Kingdom of Vaspurakan, growing into a city; Tadevos Hakobyan estimates its population at that time at over 10,000.Prior to World War I, Edremit was still sometimes called a city or rural town, but it was, at that point, a relatively small settlement. Little remained of the old town, as new houses were built using the building materials of the older structures. In the first half of the 19th century, it was inhabited by 500 households, of which 400 were Armenian and the rest were Kurdish. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Kurds were more numerous than the Armenians. At that time, the settlement reportedly had a population of 400 Kurds and 200 Armenians. The Armenian inhabitants lived in the central part of the settlement, while the Kurds mainly lived in the peripheral gardening areas. The Menua Canal divided the Armenian and Kurdish parts of the settlement. During the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, the Armenian population was robbed. Another source gives the settlement's pre-World War I population as 720 Armenians and 2,400 Kurds.
Most of the Armenian inhabitants of Artamet were killed during the Armenian genocide starting in 1915. Some of them took part in the Defense of Van, then followed the retreating Russian army and reached Russian Armenia. The events of Artamet in 1915 are described in the book Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Venezuelan writer and soldier Rafael de Nogales.
On 9 November 2011, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake occurred in Edremit.
Composition
There are 30 neighbourhoods in Edremit District:- Akın
- Andaç
- Ayazpınar
- Bakacık
- Bakımlı
- Çayırbaşı
- Dilkaya
- Doğanlar
- Dönemeç
- Elmalık
- Eminpaşa
- Enginsu
- Erdemkent
- Erenkent
- Esentepe
- Eskicamii
- Gölkaşı
- Kavurma
- Kıyıcak
- Köklü
- Köprüler
- Köşkköy
- Kurubaş
- Mülk
- Şabaniye
- Selahattin Eyyubi
- Süphan
- Taşkonak
- Yeni
- Yenicamii
Government