| Type: | metro district |
| Edremit | |
| Coordinates: | 39.5922°N 27.02°W |
| Province: | Balıkesir |
| Leader Party: | CHP |
| Leader Name: | Selman Hasan Arslan |
| Area Total Km2: | 682 |
| Elevation M: | 29 |
| Population Total: | 167901 |
| Population As Of: | 2022 |
| Postal Code: | 10300 |
| Area Code: | 0266 |
Edremit, formerly Adramyttium (Greek: Ἀδραμύττιον), is a municipality and district of Balıkesir Province, Turkey.[1] Its area is 682 km2,[2] and its population is 167,901 (2022).[3]
It is situated at the tip of the gulf with the same name (Gulf of Edremit), with its town centre a few kilometres inland, and is an important centre of trade, along with the other towns that are situated on the same gulf (namely Ayvalık, Gömeç, Burhaniye and Havran). It is also one of the largest district centres of Balıkesir Province. The district of Edremit, especially around Kazdağı, is largely covered with forests. The mayor of Edremit municipality is Selman Hasan Arslan.[4]
See main article: Adramyttium. The modern city of Edremit is named after the ancient city of Adramyttion (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἀδραμύττιον) or Adramytteion (Ἀδραμύττειον), a city of Asia Minor on the coast of Aeolis which is in near city Modern Burhaniye
Tahtacı Turkmen, descendants of the army of Shah Ismail I, settled in the mountains near Edremit after their defeat in the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514.
By 1819, Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn recorded that Edremit was only populated by "a few Greek fishermen". In 1912, the town had 6200 inhabitants, 1200 of which were Greeks. At this time, the district had 19 Greek schools and roughly 600 pupils.
In May 1914, thousands of Muslim refugees who had fled from the Balkans arrived in the town of Edremit and proceeded to ransack the shops and homes of the town's Greek community. According to Arnold J. Toynbee, the Ottoman government armed and organised the refugees. Many Greeks found refuge in the town church before fleeing to the harbour where they were then granted passage to the neighbouring island of Lesbos. Turks continued to massacre or evict Greeks in the following months in surrounding villages.
Amidst the Greek Summer Offensive of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, Edremit was seized by the Army of Asia Minor on 19 June 1920 and a Turkish Nationalist counterattack near the town was repelled. It remained under Greek control until their withdrawal in late August 1922, following which all remaining Greeks fled or were killed by the Turkish army.
There are 47 neighbourhoods in Edremit District:[5]
Edremit has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa),[6] with hot, dry summers, and cool, wet winters.
Edremit's economy relies largely on the production of olives, as well as on tourism. Edremit is known as the olive capital of Turkey. Kaz Dağı National Park, extending around the ancient Mount Ida (mentioned in Homer's epic poems such as the Iliad), is situated within the boundaries of Edremit district and is an important tourist attraction with its natural scenery and a number of picturesque small villages around it.
In ethno-cultural terms, the population of Edremit is a mixture of Balkan Turks and Balkan Albanians, descendants of immigrants from Balkans, Aegean Islands, some Circassians, as well as Tahtacı Turkmens, who pursue their own traditions and life-style to this day. A private museum of ethnography in the village of Tahtakuşlar is one of the rare institutions in Turkey focusing on Tahtacı culture.
Edremit is twinned with:
Erdenet, Mongolia since 2010
Nicolosi, Italy since 2010 [7]