Trabzon Modern Life: Trabzonspor Football Fanaticism, the Black Sea Bazaar District, Uzungol Glacier Lake Tourism, the Trabzon Character in Contemporary Turkey, and the Gulf of Trabzon Landscape
The Trabzon modern life route covers the Trabzonspor football club culture and the championship history, the bazaar district and the Black Sea market culture, the Uzungol glacial lake and the mass tourism phenomenon, the contemporary Trabzon character and identity, and the Gulf of Trabzon coastal landscape.
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Trabzonspor: The Black Sea Football Passion
Trabzonspor football club, founded in 1967 and the only Turkish club outside Istanbul to have won the Turkish Super League championship with the 6 titles won between 1976 and 1984, is the most passionately supported single football club in Turkey and the institution that most completely defines the Trabzon civic identity in the contemporary Turkish cultural landscape. The Trabzonspor Senol Gunes stadium atmosphere on the match day, with the Black Sea community in the most unified expression of the regional identity, is the most intensely emotional single public event on the Turkish Black Sea coast and the most viscerally local experience available to the football visitor.
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Trabzon Bazaar District: The Black Sea Market
The Trabzon covered bazaar and the surrounding commercial streets, the most active single market district on the Turkish Black Sea coast with the hazelnuts, the dried anchovies, the Black Sea honey, the lokum Turkish delight, and the Trabzon khachapuri cheese bread sold alongside the modern electronics and the imported goods, is the most commercially authentic single market environment in northeastern Turkey. The Trabzon hazelnuts, from the most productive hazelnut region in the world that produces 75 percent of the global hazelnut supply, are the most important single agricultural commodity of the Black Sea region.
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Uzungol: The Glacial Lake Mass Tourism
Uzungol, the glacial lake 99 kilometers south of Trabzon in the Pontic mountains surrounded by the traditional Black Sea wooden chalets and the alpine meadows, has become the most heavily visited single natural site in the Turkish Black Sea region with the weekend visitor numbers exceeding 50,000 from the Arab Gulf tourism market that discovered Uzungol in 2010 and transformed the traditional Black Sea village into the most commercially developed mountain resort on the Turkish Black Sea coast. The Uzungol development is the most extreme example of the mass tourism transformation of a previously undiscovered Turkish natural site.
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Contemporary Trabzon: The Black Sea Character
Trabzon in contemporary Turkey is the most politically conservative of the major Black Sea cities and the city that most explicitly identifies with the Turkic-Islamic cultural synthesis that the nationalist political tradition promotes, in the most striking contrast with the cosmopolitan Byzantine and Pontic Greek heritage that the archaeological and the architectural record preserves. The contemporary Trabzon identity, expressed in the Trabzonspor fanaticism, the hazelnut and anchovy regional pride, and the Pontic dance culture, is the product of the 1923 population exchange that removed the Greek Orthodox Pontic community and the subsequent Turkish settlement of the Black Sea coast.
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Gulf of Trabzon: The Coastal Landscape
The Gulf of Trabzon, the most sheltered natural bay on the Turkish Black Sea coast, provides the geographical basis for the Trabzon commercial port that handles the majority of the import and export traffic of the northeastern Turkey region and the transit goods for Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Trabzon port development from the Byzantine period caravanserai terminus of the Silk Road through the Ottoman period customs house to the modern container terminal is the most continuous single commercial infrastructure story on the Turkish Black Sea coast.
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Trabzon Practical: The Black Sea Gateway
Trabzon Havalimani Airport, 9 kilometers from the city centre and built on the Black Sea shore on the land reclaimed from the sea, is the third busiest airport in Turkey after Istanbul and Ankara and receives the domestic flights from Istanbul, Ankara, and 20 Turkish domestic routes and the international charter flights from Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The Trabzon to Rize, Artvin, and the Georgian border bus connections from the Trabzon otogar make the city the most conveniently connected single transportation hub in northeastern Turkey.