Bursa
Bursa received Ming silk in 550 AD and Ottoman capital status in 1326—2026's textile crisis tests whether automotive diversification saves what Chinese competition threatens.
Bursa exists because Ottoman empire-building required a first capital, and because silk required a western terminus. When Ottoman forces captured the Byzantine city in 1326, they established what would become the empire's capital until Edirne fell in 1363. The mausoleums of early Ottoman sultans still mark the city; mosques, caravanserais, and the first official Ottoman mint testify to 14th-century construction ambitions. Bursa sits on the Silk Road's western end—receiving silk shipments from Ming China as early as 550 AD and distributing luxury commodities to Genoa and Florence across the Mediterranean.
The silk trade that made Bursa wealthy declined in the 16th century, but textile expertise persisted. When Turkey's automotive industry sought manufacturing locations in the late 1960s, Bursa's textile workforce provided the labor base for industrialization. Tofaş opened its Fiat factory in 1968; Oyak-Renault followed in 1969. The transformation from silk entrepôt to automotive production center took less than a decade.
Today Bursa houses over 4,100 textile and apparel businesses—Turkey ranks as the 7th largest global textile supplier and 3rd in Europe, with significant concentration here. The automotive cluster produces high-tech components alongside traditional textiles, expanding into rail, aerospace, and defense equipment. Mount Uludağ (2,543 meters) adds winter tourism to the industrial base—Turkey's center of ski tourism towers over the factories below.
By 2026, Bursa will test whether Ottoman-era trade expertise survives contemporary cost pressures. Inflation, rising energy prices, and currency fluctuations have eroded Turkish products' price competitiveness against Chinese alternatives. The last quarter of 2024 brought serious losses; business owners expect 2025 conditions to worsen. Whether Bursa's textile and automotive industries adapt through automation and value-added production, or whether they follow the silk trade into historical memory, depends on macroeconomic stabilization that current inflation does not guarantee.