The massive earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday has had devastating effects.
Over 11,000 people are dead across the two countries, and over tens of thousands have been injured as rescue personnel work to clear rubble and find survivors. There has also been significant physical damage to the landscape and buildings, including a nearly-2,000 year castle.
Gaziantep Castle, in the city of Gaziantep, Turkey, suffered considerable structural damage from Monday’s earthquake and aftershocks. Much of the castle has entirely collapsed, including portions of the eastern, southern, and southeastern bastions. There are also large fissures and cracks in other bastions.
The castle is a round, walled castle with twelve bastions built into the walls.
A Turkish news agency, Anadolu, has reported: “The iron railings around the court were scattered on the surrounding sidewalks…The retaining wall next to the castle also collapsed,” and that debris covered the landscape and surrounding roads.
A seventeenth-century mosque beside the castle has also suffered significant damage, as well.
Building on Gaziantep Castle started sometime between the second and the third centuries when the Romans expanded upon a previously established Hittite watchtower.
The castle that we know it as was built during the reign of Emperor Justinian I in the middle of the sixth century AD.
Further work was completed on the castle in the twelfth and thirteen centuries during the Ayyubid dynasty.
It was captured by the Ottomans in 1516 and served various political, cultural, and social functions for the Ottoman Empire over the centuries, still largely serving as a defensive structure.
The castle was used as a museum, with the Gaziantep Defence and Heroism Panoramic Museum only established recently in 2022. The museum includes information on the Turkish War of Independence in the early 1920s, as well as on the castle’s long lifespan.
