Turgut is a town in

Muğla Province Muğla Province ( tr, , ) is a province of Turkey, at the country's south-western corner, on the Aegean Sea. Its seat is Muğla, about inland, while some of Turkey's largest holiday resorts, such as Bodrum, Ölüdeniz, Marmaris and Fethiye, ...

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

Geography

Turgut is in Yatağan district of

. The town is situated at . The distance to Yatağan is and to

Muğla Muğla () is a city in southwestern Turkey. The city is the center of the District of Menteşe and Muğla Province, which stretches along Turkey's Aegean coast. Muğla's center is situated inland at an altitude of 660 m and lies at a dista ...

is . The population of the town is 2,065 as of 2010.

History

The ruins of the ancient cult city

Lagina Lagina ( grc, Λάγινα) or Laginia (Λαγινία) was a town in the territory of Stratonicea, in ancient Caria. It contained an important temple of Hecate, at which every year great festivals were celebrated. Tacitus, when speaking of the ...

is around Turgut and the alternative name of the town Leyne may be a corrupt form of Lagina. The town also houses an old mosque which is claimed to be built by İlyas Bey of

Menteşe Beylik __NOTOC__ Menteshe ( ota, منتشه, tr, Menteşe) was the first of the Anatolian beyliks, the frontier principalities established by the Oghuz Turks after the decline of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. Founded in 1260/1290, it was named for ...

in 1311. Another building of historical importance is the mansion of

Osman Hamdi Bey Osman Hamdi Bey (30 December 1842, in Istanbul 24 February 1910) was an Ottoman Empire, Ottoman administrator, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering painter. He was also an accomplished archaeologist, and is regarded as th ...

who stayed in Turgut between 1891-1893 during Lagina excavations. His house underwent a major restoration and refurbishment work and opened to public as a Museum.Page of Habitat project
/ref>

Archaeology

Recent studies have shown that the site had been inhabited and/or employed in an uninterrupted manner during a time span stretching back to the Bronze Age. Seleucid kings conducted a considerable reconstruction effort in the sacred ground of Lagina and transformed it into a foremost religious center of its time, with the nearby (at a distance of 11 kilometers) site of Stratonicea becoming the administrative center. The two sites (Lagina and Stratoniceakeia) were connected to each other in antiquity by a holy path. The archaeological research conducted in Lagina is historically significant in that it was the first to have been done by a Turkish scientific team, under the direction of Osman Hamdi Bey and Halit Ethem Bey. In 1993, excavation and restoration work was resumed under the guidance of Muğla Museum, by an international team advised by Professor Ahmet Tırpan. The friezes of the Hecate sanctuary are displayed in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. Some of the archaeological finds unearthed are on display in Mugla Museum.

Economy

Main economic activity of the town is agriculture. Cereals and olive are the most important crops. There are some olive oil factories. There is a lignite mine around the town . The lignite is used in Yatağan Thermal Power Plant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turgut, Mugla Populated places in Muğla Province Towns in Turkey Yatağan District