Karadeniz İncelemeleri Dergisi

Öz

Trabzon is a region that has hosted many
communities throughout history. Therefore,
it is possible to see traces of various cultures in the region. Since the settlements in the coastal part of
Trabzon were to a great extent served for the commercial activities, the
population of this region has been cosmopolite. Today,
the settlements established in the valleys where agriculture and
livestock-based livelihoods are common and people from the same lineage are
more intense. This diversity has had a great
effect in shaping the cultural texture of Trabzon since the early ages. It is seen that there is a multicultural
structure on the shore whereas there have been cultures in the valleys having
preserved their originality for centuries. As the
cultural texture of Trabzon shows the difference between the valley and coastal
settlements, the valley settlements can be divided into two groups. Some of
these valleys were built before the Turkish settlement thereby making the
Greek/Orthodox culture intense. On the other hand, Turkish-Islamic culture is
dominant in the valleys with the Turkish settlement such as Agasar and Fol
valleys. Tonya was an uninhabited place in the Fol Valley until the early 19^th
century, but it became a Turkish settlement with the domination of the Ottoman
Empire. In the last period of the Trebizond Greek State, the Fol Valley became
the border between the Turks and the Greeks. After
the Ottomans dominated the region, the Fol Valley was opened to settlement. Since it was founded by the Turks, the Turkish
influence in Tonya's cultural texture is quite considerable. Although the monocultural structure of the region
diversified with the settlement of the Greeks, the Turkish prevalence in the
cultural texture of Tonya continued. The
traces of the Greek/Orthodox culture are not so visible in the Fol valley as
that of Altındere or Kromni.