| Type: | village |
| Province: | Afyonkarahisar |
| District: | Emirdağ |
| Karacalar | |
| Population Total: | 667 |
| Population As Of: | 2021 |
| Coordinates: | 38.9667°N 45°W |
Karacalar is a village in the Emirdağ District, Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey.[1] Its population is 667 (2021).[2]
The village was founded in the 1730s as Kiliççeken, it was later renamed Üç Kuyu, then in 1850 Karacalar.[3]
Many inhabitants from Karacalar migrated to Western Europe since the 1960s.
The reportedly first migrant from the Emirdag district to Belgium, in 1963, was 'Kötü Ahmet', Ahmet Öztürk, originally from Karacalar. In 2000 his son Mustafa Öztürk was elected as a municipal councillor in the Belgian commune of Schaerbeek.[4] [5] [6]
The village head Nurettin Shahbaz, who was in charge for four mandates between 1984 and 2014, lived and worked himself in Belgium in 1973-1974 as a toiler in a cement factory in Ottignies. He came back after having lost two children in the fire of his housing in Brussels. Most of his brothers and sisters, and one of his sons, stayed in Belgium.[7] The Shahbaz family is well known in the Turkish neighbourhood in Brussels (Schaerbeek and Saint-Josse-ten-Noode) as the Dede of the Karacalar Alevis has traditionally been one of his members.
List of the village heads (Köy muhtar)[3]