Karkamış

Karkamış, formerly Carablus, is a municipality and district of Gaziantep Province, Turkey. Its area is 298 km2, and its population is 9,379 (2022). It is next to the site of ancient Carchemish.

It is a border checkpoint on the road to Jarabulus in Syria.

History
What is now the present-day town of Karkamış was essentially a constituent neighborhood of the town Jarabulus known as Şeyhavi. Upon the formation of the Syria–Turkey border, which followed the railroad running through the town, this neighborhood was isolated from the rest. The newly-isolated settlement was initially renamed to Cerablus in 1928 after the main town, Barak in 1946 after a Turkmen tribe found in the region, and lastly Karkamış after the ancient town Carchemish.

Geography 
The Euphrates runs east of Karkamış southward into Syria. At this place, a railway bridge of  that was built between 1911 and 1913 by German engineers as part of the Istanbul-Baghdad Railway, crosses the river parallel to the border line.

One of the 21 dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), the Karkamış Dam and hydroelectric power station is located  upstream from the border crossing of Euphrates.

Composition
There are 39 neighbourhoods in Karkamış District:

 Akçaköy
 Alaçalı
 Alagöz
 Arıkdere
 Ayyıldız
 Balaban
 Beşkılıç
 Çarşı
 Çiftlik
 Eceler
 Elifoğlu
 Erenyolu
 Etiler
 Gürçay
 Karacurun
 Karanfil
 Karşıyaka
 Kelekli
 Kepirler
 Kıvırcık
 Korkmazlar
 Kuruyazı
 Lojmanlar
 Öncüler
 Örmetaş
 Savaş
 Şenlik
 Soylu
 Subağı
 Teketaşı
 Tosunlu
 Türkyurdu
 Yarımca
 Yaşar
 Yazır
 Yeşerti
 Yolağzı
 Yurtbağı
 Zührecik

Demographics 
The district is mostly populated by Turkmens from the Barak tribe, which inhabits all villages in the district while sharing some with other groups. Arabs are also found in the town of Karkamış and two villages.

Archeology

In March 2011, the Turkish military base which included the ruins of Karkemish was cleared of mines. Archaeologists from Italy and Turkey began excavations, still ongoing, in the ancient town in September 2011.

The ancient site of Karkemish is now an extensive set of ruins, located on the West bank of Euphrates River, about  south-east of Gaziantep, Turkey and  northeast of Aleppo, Syria. The site is crossed by the Syria–Turkey border. A Turkish military base has been built after 1920 on the Karkemish acropolis and Inner Town, and access to the acropolis is still restricted. Most of the Outer Town lies in Syrian territory.

Karkemish has always been well known to scholars because of several references to it in the Bible (Jer. 46:2; 2 Chr. 35:20; Isa. 10:9) and in Egyptian and Assyrian texts. However, its location was identified only in 1876 by George Smith.

The site was excavated by the British Museum, 1878-1881 by Patrick Henderson, 1911 by D. G. Hogarth and R. C. Thompson, and from 1912 to 1914 by C. L. Woolley, and T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"). Excavations were interrupted in 1914 by World War I, resumed in 1920 with Woolley and then ended with the Turkish War of Independence. These expeditions uncovered substantial remains of the Neo-Hittite and Neo-Assyrian periods, including defensive structures, temples, palaces, and numerous basalt statues and reliefs with Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Following the completion in March 2011 of mine clearing operations on the Turkish portion of the site, archaeological work was resumed in September 2011 by a Turco-Italian joint archaeological expedition under the direction of Prof. Nicolò Marchetti of the University of Bologna.

References

 
Districts of Gaziantep Province
Syria–Turkey border crossings
Populated places in Gaziantep Province
Metropolitan district municipalities in Turkey
Turkoman settlements in Gaziantep Province