Buca

Buca (, ) is a municipality and district of İzmir Province, Turkey. Its area is 178 km2, and its population is 522,404 (2022). It covers the southeastern part of the agglomeration of İzmir and the adjacent countryside.

History
Buca was one of the preferred settlement areas of İzmir's community of Levantines. The great mansions they built in the 19th century stand to this day, most of them restored.

The district center is situated slightly inland like the district of Bornova with which it shares important points in common, and on the higher ground that commands the southern shores of the tip of the Gulf of İzmir. Buca existed from the Byzantine times and was inhabited by Greeks, mainly farmers. However, Buca started to develop as of the end of the 17th century when the French consulate in İzmir moved there following the 1676 plague and the 1688 Smyrna earthquake that seriously shook İzmir's core as an international trade center. Its rich Levantine residents who acquired the surrounding vineyards typically had Latin backgrounds, as opposed to those who originally came from Britain and who preferred Bornova. But in the case both of Bornova and of Buca, the concentration in terms of ethnic backgrounds was far from having an exclusive nature. Yet, in 1770, following the failure of the Orlov Revolt, a revolt of the Greeks in today's Greece against the Ottoman occupation encouraged by the Russian Nobles Orlov in 1770 (during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774)), many Greeks from the revolted regions fled from Peloponnese, Chios, Andros, and Kythira and settled in Buca, contributing to the growth of the place.

Later, in 1861, when the railway reached Buca from Smyrna, many rich Europeans from Smyrna built their summer houses in Buca. Yet, due to its substantial growth, Buca soon became a suburb of Smyrna and people started to stay there permanently. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three Greek Orthodox churches, two Greek community schools (one for males, one for females) as well as some private Greek schools also, while there were two private English schools, one catholic nonnes' school and one Capuchin monks school. The Greeks, together with other Christian inhabitants, constituted the majority of the local population, while Muslim (Turkish) population was very small. However, Greek inhabitants were expulsed in 1922 and fled to Greece, where they named their new settlement "Neos Voutzas" (meaning "New Buca"), close to Athens. As a result, there are today only a Catholic and a Baptist church in service in Buca. Many of the 19th-century houses have been restored and are still being used either by public institutions or by private persons, although many still need care. The core area of Buca could preserve its traditional architectural tissue based on two-storey residences, while apartment blocks mushroomed in its extensions, as it is the case in all localities in Turkey which had to absorb immigration. There are a number of municipal parks, notably a vast ongoing project that comprises seven artificial lakes.

NATO's Allied Land Command headquarters was established in Buca in 2012.

Composition
There are 48 neighbourhoods in Buca District:

 29 Ekim
 Adatepe
 Akıncılar
 Atatürk
 Aydoğdu
 Barış
 Belenbaşı
 Bucakoop
 Çağdaş
 Çaldıran
 Çamlık
 Çamlıkule
 Çamlıpınar
 Cumhuriyet
 Dicle
 Doğancılar
 Dumlupınar
 Efeler
 Fırat
 Gaziler
 Göksu
 Güven
 Hürriyet
 Inkılap
 İnönü
 İzkent
 Karacaağaç
 Karanfil
 Kaynaklar Cumhuriyet
 Kaynaklar Merkez
 Kırklar
 Kozağaç
 Kuruçeşme
 Laleli
 Menderes
 Murathan
 Mustafa Kemal
 Seyhan
 Şirinkapı
 Ufuk
 Vali Rahmi Bey
 Yaylacık
 Yenigün
 Yeşilbağlar
 Yiğitler
 Yıldız
 Yıldızlar
 Zafer

Education
Dokuz Eylül University, one of the two larger universities in İzmir, has its newly built main campus located in Buca, in the locality called Tınaztepe. While the university has dependencies scattered all over İzmir, it is largely associated with Buca, in the same way as the other large university, Ege University, is associated with Bornova.

Hippodrome

The hippodrome of İzmir is located in Buca, in the quarter named Şirinyer along the road to İzmir metropolitan center, and the hippodrome is known under the name of this quarter (as Şirinyer Hipodromu). Şirinyer area used to be called Kızılçullu, in reference to a legend according to which Tamerlane would have established his headquarters here during his 1402 siege of İzmir ("Kızılçullu" meaning "red horseclothes"), and Buca's Levantine population, who owned orchards and vineyards here, had named the area under the no less assumptive name of Paradiso.

Notable people 
Çevik Bir, the retired Turkish general who was the force commander of during the United Nations' Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and an influential figure in Turkey's politics and diplomacy in the 1990s, is from Buca and a public square is named after him.

The Swedish naturalist Fredrik Hasselquist (1722–1752) died in Buca.

See also
 Cemil Şeboy
 Dokuz Eylül University
 Levantine mansions of Smyrna

Gallery

References

External links
 Metropolitan Municipality of Greater İzmir
 Dokuz Eylül University
 Dokuz Eylül University Forum
 Şirinyer Hippodrome page of Turkish Jockey Club 

Populated places in İzmir Province
 
Districts of İzmir Province
Metropolitan district municipalities in Turkey