The Yoruks of Gülnar in the First Half of the 19^th Century

The Gülnar town, which belongs to İçel Sancak, is a location where the Yoruks, spread in a large area in Anatolian and Rumelian parts of the Ottoman lands, densely populated in the first half of the 19th century. According to the geographic feature of the region, the Yoruks, having semisedentary life in mountain pastures (yaylak) and winter shelters (kışlak) which were very close to each other, have quite different names. Some of them are the oymaks (a kind of tribe in Turks) which have lived there since the past times. Moreover, some of the obas that came out of those oymaks became a separate oymaks by getting larger in population. Although there was a significant diversity regarding their occupational and professional fields among the families percentage; the area, where the Yoruks became united in terms of agriculture and livestock, was rich in terms of the density of the Yoruk settlement and showed important traces of Turkish culture. Towards the end of the first half of the 19th century, when compared with the sedentary people, the Gülnar Yoruks seemed quite numerous and started to have a sedentary life not only by founding villages with their own names but also by settling down in other villages. Therefore, there are lots of residential areas which are called as oymak in Gülnar and its surroundings.