Walking its streets, steeped in Rumi's spirit of tolerance, we usually imagine Konya as a "grain basket" or as a capital of spirituality. Yet this ancient city has another face: an epic of production reaching from smoking chimneys to high-technology factories. Let us change our route today; let us set out from the mudbrick workshops on a journey into the remarkable history of a Konya industry that now challenges the world.
Where Did the First Wheels Turn? Çatalhöyük and the Seljuk Legacy
Çatalhöyük, where humanity began to work the soil and produce its first surplus, is also the land where trade was born, between 9,000 and 11,000 BC. The obsidian trade and mining activity that began in the 8000s BC prove what an important centre of exchange Konya was even in prehistory.
When the wheel of time turns to the years when the city served as capital of the Anatolian Seljuk State, we find it transformed into a centre of craft shaped by the philosophy of the Ahi brotherhood. The sound of hammers echoing through the bazaars, the remarkable carpets coming off the looms and the culture of leatherwork engraved the codes of "quality and honesty" into Konya's productive genes for good.
The Pulse of Industry in the Ottoman Period: Sille Stone and Spoons That Crossed Borders
In the late Ottoman period Konya was not only a commercial crossroads where caravans caught their breath; it also quickened its industrial step. The Saltpetre (Gunpowder) Factory, which came into operation in 1834 and was among the city's first industrial plants, is the most concrete example.
But did you know that Konya made an impression in Paris at that time? "Konya spoon-making" had reached such refinement that the beautiful spoons carved by hand by Hüseyin Ruşen Efendi were awarded a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, making our name known to the world. The Konya School of Industry, opened in 1901 to bring the craftsman's spirit together with technical education, became a home that raised the masters of the future.
The Republic's Industrial Drive and the Spirit of the Old Industrial Quarter
With the proclamation of the Republic, the wind of industrialisation that began across Türkiye filled Konya's sails too. Enterprises that sprouted with the Law for the Encouragement of Industry in 1927 grew in time into vast factories. The Sümerbank Ereğli Textile Factory, which began production in 1937, and then the Konya Sugar Factory and the Konya Cement Factory, whose chimneys began to smoke in 1954, are symbols of the city's move into modern industry.
The foundations of today's enormous industrial plants were in fact laid in the 1960s in the small, oil-scented workshops of the Motor Vehicles Industrial Estate — what the people of Konya call the Old Industrial Quarter — where a great deal of sweat was spilled. That spirit, reaching from apprentice to master and from master to global entrepreneur, was crowned by the Konya 1st Organised Industrial Zone, founded in 1969. The city's love of production shed its individual character and, through organised industrial zones established one after another, took on an institutional identity, multiplying its capacity to reach the strength it has today.
The Guide's Note: Today's Export Giant
Today Konya is home to Türkiye's second largest organised industrial zone, covering more than 31 million square metres. With exports exceeding 3.305 billion dollars in 2023 alone, it is a technology and production hub sending automotive parts, castings, agricultural machinery and defence industry products to every corner of the world.
Next time you walk through Konya, just beyond the historic Bedesten Bazaar, do not forget to listen for the sound of those powerful industrial wheels that have been turning, producing and opening onto the world for thousands of years.