Sebil is a neighbourhood in the municipality and district of

Çamlıyayla Çamlıyayla is a municipality and district of Mersin Province, Turkey. Its area is 602 km2, and its population is 8,164 (2022). Çamlıyayla is a small district high in the Taurus Mountains. In summer the lakes, streams and pine forests of ...

Mersin Province Mersin Province (), formerly İçel Province (), is a Provinces of Turkey, province and Metropolitan municipalities in Turkey, metropolitan municipality in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast between Antalya Province, A ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. Its population is 1,726 (2022). Before the 2013 reorganisation, it was a town (''

belde Belde (literally "town", also known as ''kasaba'') means "large village with a municipality" in Turkish language, Turkish. All Turkish province centers and district centers have municipalities, but the Villages of Turkey, villages are usually too ...

'').

Geography

Sebil is a part of

district which in turn is a part of Mersin Province. Distance between Sebil and Çamlıyayla is . Sebil is located on southern slopes of

Toros Mountains The Taurus Mountains ( Turkish: ''Toros Dağları'' or ''Toroslar,'' Greek'':'' Ταύρος) are a mountain complex in southern Turkey, separating the Mediterranean coastal region from the central Anatolian Plateau. The system extends along a ...

. The average altitude is about . The country about Sebil is chiefly formed of conglomerate and

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

. Just west of the town there is a

canyon A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency t ...

, approximately deep. The canyon had been formed by the rivulet Cehennem Deresi which is a tributary of

Berdan River The Berdan (also Baradān or Baradā), the ancient Cydnus (), is a river in Mersin Province, south Turkey. The historical city of Tarsus is on the river and it is therefore sometimes called the Tarsus River. Originally the watercourse passed dir ...

History

Five centuries ago the nomadic

Oghuz Turks The Oghuz Turks ( Middle Turkic: , ) were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia ...

(also called Yörük) used this location as their summer camps (so called '' yayla''). They called the location Sebil meaning free (i.e., no rent for the camp). In later years observing the winter was not harsh, eventually they chose the area as their permanent settlement.Mayor’s page
/ref> Sebil was declared a township in 1972.

Economy

Sebil produces fresh fruits and vegetables. A secondary economic activity is

animal husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, animal fiber, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, management, production, nutrition, selective breeding, and the raising ...

. Domestic tourism in the canyon also seems promising with challenging tracking courses and game animals in the dense forest.

References

{{Çamlıyayla District Neighbourhoods in Çamlıyayla District