Map stops

The empire’s last century

• The ’93 War and the muhacirs1877–1878
  The Ottoman-Russian War of 1877–1878 set off mass migrations from the Rumelian and Anatolian fronts.

• The Mudanya–Bursa railway1892
  The Mudanya–Bursa railway opened in 1892.

War and the great exchange

• The occupation of Bursa8 July 1920 – 11 September 1922
  The Greek army occupied Bursa on 8 July 1920.

• Sofoklis Venizelos at the Tomb of Osman Gazi14 July 1920
  Sofoklis Venizelos was photographed at the Tomb of Osman Gazi during the occupation of Bursa.

• The liberation of Bursa and Mudanya11 September – 11 October 1922
  Bursa was freed from Greek occupation on 11 September 1922.

• The population exchange convention at Lausanne30 January 1923
  The convention of 30 January 1923 provided for the compulsory exchange of Greek Orthodox Turkish nationals and Muslim Greek nationals.

• The exchange in Bursa, Yalova and Mudanya1923–1925
  During the exchange, Muslim families from Greece were settled in and around Mudanya.

On the shore of the Republic

• The Bursa Electricity Company and nationalisation1924–1939
  Attempts to obtain an electricity concession in Bursa, begun in the late Ottoman period, were cut short by war.

• The Hat Law and the closure of dervish lodges25 and 30 November 1925
  The Hat Law was passed on 25 November 1925.

• The Turkish Civil Code17 February 1926; in force 4 October
  The Turkish Civil Code was adopted on 17 February 1926 and came into force on 4 October.

• Koza Han and the continuity of trade1926
  In the 1926 Bursa Guide, Koza Han appears as one of the hubs of the silk, cocoon and silkworm-egg trade and of financial institutions.

• The new Turkish alphabet1 November 1928; adoption
  The new Turkish alphabet was adopted by the law passed on 1 November 1928.

• Atatürk’s visits to Bursa and Mudanya21–22 August 1929
  Atatürk’s visit to Bursa in August 1929 and the reforms were covered in the press.

• The Free Republican Party was born in YalovaJuly–November 1930
  Faced with reform fatigue and economic hardship, Atatürk wanted a controlled opposition.

• The Turkish History Thesis took shape in Yalova1930–1932
  From the summer of 1930, history and language were the main topics of the table talk at the Yalova mansion; Afet İnan’s handwritten notes bear the traces of this work.

• Yalova in the Atatürk years1929–1938
  From 1929, with Atatürk’s visits to Yalova, the thermal baths, roads and model farms were developed.

• Changing labour and daily life in the countrysideAfter 1945
  Changes in mechanisation, schooling and transport reshaped women’s work and daily life in the villages of Bursa.

Research today

• The Yalova Agreement: historians and philologists on a common method26–28 July 2025
  At the Yalova meeting, which Hacer Karabağ Arslan coordinated, historians and philologists working on editions of Ottoman sources sought common methodological ground through fifteenth-century chronicles.

• TÜBİTAK 1001: a century of change in rural Bursa2026–2028
  The project led by Hacer Karabağ Arslan combines more than 300 oral history interviews in 65 villages of Bursa with archival and statistical data to trace agrarian change between 1907 and 2023.

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