Konya
From Çatalhöyük's 9,000-year-old proto-city to Rumi's turquoise-domed tomb drawing two million annual visitors—Konya converts a 13th-century refugee poet's legacy into Turkey's most durable cultural economy.
Nine thousand years of continuous habitation make Konya one of humanity's oldest urban experiments. Çatalhöyük, seven kilometers southeast, was a proto-city of 10,000 people around 7500 BCE—among the earliest known settlements where humans transitioned from nomadic to sedentary life. The agricultural revolution that began on this Anatolian plateau produced the surplus that made cities possible in the first place.
Konya's golden age arrived when the Seljuk Turks made it their capital in the 11th century. The Sultanate of Rum (1077–1308) transformed the city into a political, economic, and cultural hub on the Silk Road, commissioning mosques, madrasas, and caravanserais that still define its skyline. Sultan Alaaddin Keykubad I (1220–1237) presided over the apex. The city attracted scholars, architects, and mystics from across the Islamic world—most consequentially Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, who fled Mongol-invaded Balkh in the 1220s, settled in Konya, and founded the Mevlevi Sufi order. His turquoise-domed tomb draws nearly two million visitors annually, making a 13th-century Persian poet Konya's primary economic asset eight centuries later.
Modern Konya is Turkey's sixth-largest city, with 2.3 million in the metropolitan province. Its economy balances agriculture (the surrounding plateau is Turkey's breadbasket), manufacturing, and heritage tourism. The city occupies a conservative political niche within Turkish society, consistently delivering strong margins for the ruling AKP. This political alignment has channeled infrastructure investment—high-speed rail connecting Konya to Ankara and Istanbul—while reinforcing its identity as Anatolia's spiritual heartland.
The Rumi effect illustrates how cultural founder events generate centuries of economic returns. A refugee scholar's 13th-century decision to settle here created a pilgrimage economy, a tourism brand, and an international cultural identity that outlasted the Seljuk state, the Ottoman Empire, and the secular republic that followed. Konya's challenge mirrors that of any city built on a single cultural asset: whether the whirling dervishes can sustain an economy that agriculture and light industry alone cannot.