Bayirbucak ( tr, Bayırbucak) is a region in the

Latakia District Latakia District ( ar, منطقة اللاذقية, manṭiqat al-Lādhiqīyah) is a district of the Latakia Governorate in northwestern Syria. The administrative centre is the city of Latakia. At the 2004 census, the district had a population o ...

of the Latakia Governorate in northwestern

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. There is a considerable

Syrian Turkmen Syrian Turkmen, also referred to as Syrian Turkomans, Turkish Syrians, or simply Syrian Turks or Turks of Syria, ( ar, تركمان سوريا; tr, Suriye Türkmenleri or ) are Syrian citizens of Turkish people, Turkish origin who mainly trace ...

presence in the area have strong cultural and historical ties with Turkey. Bayirbucak's most distinctive mountain is

Turkmen Mountain Turkmen Mountain ( ar, جبل تركمان; ''Jabal Turkman'', tr, Türkmen Dağı) is a mountain range in the north of the Latakia region of Syria, in the area called Bayırbucak locally in Turkish, neighboring the Turkish border. The name is ...

( ar, جبل تركمان; ''Jabal Turkman'', tr, Türkmen Dağı)

Etymology

Bayirbucak is a Turkish

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group ...

, and not the official name for the region, which is Al-Rabiaa subdistrict. The word Bayırbucak comes from two different words in Turkish: bayır (en: hillside) and bucak (en: district). According to Ottoman archival documents, Bayir was the official name of the district (''nahiye'') in the Ottoman period.

Notable events

On 24 November 2015, two Turkish

F-16 The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successf ...

s shot down one of two Russian

Su-24 The Sukhoi Su-24 (NATO reporting name: Fencer) is a supersonic, all-weather attack aircraft developed in the Soviet Union. The aircraft has a variable-sweep wing, twin-engines and a side-by-side seating arrangement for its crew of two. It was ...

fighter jets, which violated Turkish airspace while in an operation to attack militia in Bayirbucak. One Russian pilot was killed by Turkmen forces. Russian aerial bombardments during the 2015–16 Latakia offensive resulted in a very difficult situation in the Bayirbucak Turkmen regions, causing almost all Turkmens to flee the region to Turkey.

References

Latakia District Geography of Syria Turkmen communities in Syria Turkish-speaking territories in Syria {{Syria-geo-stub