Yaka Castle (also known as Güdübeş Castle) is a castle ruin in

Mersin Province Mersin Province ( tr, ), formerly İçel Province ( tr, ), is a province in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast between Antalya and Adana. The provincial capital and the biggest city in the province is Mersin, which is composed of fo ...

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 ...

. Although its name is Güdübeş, it is popularly known as Yaka referring to a former village to the east of the castle.

Geography

The castle is to the east of

Mersin Mersin (), also known as İçel, is a large city and a port on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. It is the provincial capital of Mersin Province, Mersin (İçel) Province. It is made up of four municipalities and dis ...

. It can be reached by a short lane from the Turkish state highway D.400 which connects Mersin to Tarsus Its distance to Mersin is .

History

The castle was built by

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

in medieval times and nothing is known about its history.

The plan

The plan of the castle is square. But only two walls (north and west) are partially standing. There are three observation towers. The plan of the one at the south east corner is square, the plan of the one at the east is circular and the plan of the one at north east corner is polygonal.Mersin Ören Yerleri, Mersin Valiliği, İstanbul, 2009, p.31 Because the masonry is so dissimilar to that used by the Armenians and the Byzantines in Cilicia and because parts of this coastal region were occupied by the Knights Hospitaller in the late 12th and 13th centuries, it is possible that the site was constructed by the Crusaders.

References

External links

For the imagesCarefully documented photographs and plan of Yaka castle
Castles in Mersin Province Ruined castles in Turkey Crusader castles {{crusades-stub