300px, A view of Uludağ from Görükle Görükle (or Gyourouklyeh) is a town in the district of Nilüfer in western Bursa Province,

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. It is a

college town A college town or university town is a community (often a separate town or city, but in some cases a town/city neighborhood or a district) that is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several sma ...

, being situated near the campus of

Uludağ University Uludağ (), the ancient Mysian or Bithynian Olympus (Greek: Όλυμπος), is a mountain in Bursa Province, Turkey, with an elevation of . In Turkish, ''Uludağ'' means "great mountain". In ancient times the range of which it is a part, ext ...

and home to many college students. The town is accessible by metro and shuttle buses from the central parts of Bursa. Shuttle buses regularly run to the nearby Uludağ University campus, and the town has places such as cafés and takeaways frequented by university students. It also has many private dormitory buildings, hostels, and apartment blocks where apartments are mainly rented to students.

History

The place used to be a Greek village called Kouvouklia (or Kouvoukleia) in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

and for several hundred years in the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

before that.Nicholas, Fotine Z., 1988, "Land Where My Fathers Died", Ararat, pp. 42-45 The ethnic Greeks who hadn't already fled Kouvouklia were forced to leave in 1922 due to the

population exchange between Greece and Turkey The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ( el, Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, I Antallagí, ota, مبادله, Mübâdele, tr, Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at ...

. In addition to college students, today's citizens include many descendants of Turks who emigrated from Greece as a result of the population exchange agreement in the 1920s after the

Turkish War of Independence The Turkish War of Independence "War of Liberation", also known figuratively as ''İstiklâl Harbi'' "Independence War" or ''Millî Mücadele'' "National Struggle" (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns waged by th ...

References

Populated places in Bursa Province Towns in Turkey {{Bursa-geo-stub