Bilecik
The founding site of the Ottoman Empire in 1299 became Turkey's marble quarry; Bilecik now produces 11% of national stone output. With 228,058 residents dependent on extractive industry and finite reserves, 2026 will test whether global marble demand can sustain monoculture economics.
What makes a small province Turkey's silent quarry to the world's architecture? Bilecik sits atop ancient seabeds where marine organisms deposited calcium carbonate for 200 million years, creating marble reserves that supply 10% of Turkey's stone exports.
The region's significance predates marble extraction by millennia. Sogut, a town in Bilecik province, is where Ertugrul Gazi settled his Kayi tribe around 1231—and where his son Osman I founded what became the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans established their first capital here in 1299 before conquering Bursa. For centuries afterward, Bilecik remained a quiet agricultural backwater, its marble reserves unexploited beneath sheep pastures.
The transformation began in the 1960s when mechanized quarrying made commercial extraction viable. What had been pastoral hillsides became open-pit mines. The pink and white porphyries of Vezirhan and Kosedere, the distinctive red and peach stones of Hirtlar and Kulumbe, and especially the cream-colored 'Bilecik Beige' found international markets. Today, 19 natural stone processing plants generate 98% of the marble produced in the province and 11% of Turkey's total output.
This specialization carries both opportunity and risk. Turkey controls 33% of global marble reserves and leads world exports at $667 million annually (2023), with Bilecik among its core production zones alongside Afyon, Denizli, and Mugla. Yet the province of 228,058 residents (2024) faces the classic resource extraction dilemma: quarrying creates jobs but depletes finite reserves, while processing generates substantial waste that scientific studies are only beginning to address.
Beyond marble, Bilecik maintains agriculture, forestry, and ceramic production using locally-sourced feldspar. But the marble-industrial symbiosis defines its modern identity. By 2026, the province's trajectory depends on whether Turkey's dominance in global marble markets can sustain Bilecik's extraction economy—or whether depleting reserves and environmental costs will force diversification beyond the stone that Ottoman emperors once walked upon.