Hatay is a province in the southeastern part of Mediterranean Turkey, bordering Syria.

Cities

The Crusader-era Bakras Castle, standing in isolation on the Amanos Mountains between Antakya and İskenderun

• 1 Antakya, also known as Antioch — the provincial capital is a riverside city with a great Mosaic Museum and is the hub for early Christian sites in the surrounding countryside
• 2 Iskenderun, also known as Alexandretta — the largest city of the province is a major Mediterranean port, with a pleasant palm-lined waterfront

Understand

Hatay is the only piece of land annexed by Turkey after its modern borders were defined in the Lausanne and Ankara Treaties of 1923 and 1926, respectively. From 1920, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the province was under French administration as part of the French Mandate of Syria and was then known as the Sandjak (county) of Alexandretta. However, a significant ethnic Turkish population remained. In 1938 the French relinquished control under Turkish pressure, and the area appeared on the maps as the independent State of Hatay, a name coined after the ancient Hittites by Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, to associate the area better with the Anatolian heartland. Following a plebiscite a year later, it joined Turkey as Hatay Province. This move hasn't been recognized by the Syrian government to this day, and the maps published in Syria continue to show Hatay as part of the country, often with dashed lines over the actual border implying some sort of "special administration".

It's easy to point out Hatay on maps, even those showing full continents, as it is where the southern border of Turkey, which follows a roughly straight line in a west-east direction extends significantly southwards. On the very northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, where the northern shores curves into the Middle Eastern coast stretching south (traditionally known as the Levant), it's possible to find long and sandy beaches popular with the locals, although the traditional centre, Antakya/Antioch, is inland.

Talk

Almost all people in the province can speak Turkish, although with a heavy accent in most cases. Also, the Syrian dialect of Arabic is the native tongue for many people in the province, especially in the south.

Get in

By air

Domestic flights are available to Hatay Airport about 25 km north of Antakya and 45 km southeast of Iskenderun. The nearest international airport is in Adana to the north.

By train

The only significant station within the province is in Iskenderun, which welcomes trains three times daily (morning, around noon, and evening) from Mersin via Tarsus and Adana.

By car

The main road connecting the province to the rest of Turkey is the toll motorway O-53. There are also secondary highways, some of which eventually reach the border posts on the Turkish-Syrian border.

Connect

The telephone code of the province is 326, which should be prefixed with 0 when calling from elsewhere in Turkey, or with +90 when calling from abroad.

Go next

With two border posts (with roads leading to Aleppo, and Latakia), Hatay is usually a jumping off point for trips into Syria to the south and east. The neighbouring Turkish regions of the Cilician Plains to the northwest and Southeastern Anatolia to the northeast share many cultural traits with Hatay.