Giresun

Giresun gave the world the word 'cherry.' The Greek colony of Kerasous, established by settlers from Sinope sometime after 630 BC, took its name from the ancient Greek kerasós—cherry tree. When Roman commander Lucullus conquered the region during his 74-66 BC campaign against Mithridates, he brought cherry trees back to Rome. The Latin cerasum spread across languages: French cerise, Spanish cereza, Turkish kiraz, English cherry. Every cherry orchard in the world carries Giresun's linguistic DNA.

The Greeks built on geography, not agriculture. The city occupies a prominent horn-shaped peninsula jutting into the Black Sea—an alternative etymology derives Kerasous from keras, meaning 'horn.' Xenophon's Anabasis records his retreating Ten Thousand passing through in 400 BC. Pharnaces I of Pontus renamed it Pharnacia after capturing it in 183 BC, but the original name proved resilient, officially restored in 64 AD. Byzantine and Seljuk armies traded the city repeatedly before the Empire of Trebizond absorbed it from 1204 to 1461, when Ottoman conquest made Kerasous permanently Turkish as Giresun.

The province's modern identity centers not on cherries but on hazelnuts. Turkey produces 72% of the world's hazelnuts, with 60% coming from the Eastern Black Sea region where Giresun anchors production alongside Ordu, Trabzon, and Samsun. Approximately 400,000 hazelnut producers work these coastal slopes—historically women's work that is now extending to processing and sales. The province's hazelnuts command premium prices for quality the Pontic Greeks who grew cherries could never have imagined.

The 2025 hazelnut season exposed climate vulnerability at industrial scale. Severe spring frosts killed up to 90% of buds in some high-altitude orchards. Pest outbreaks—fungus, powdery mildew, green and brown stink bugs—compounded damage. Production forecasts collapsed from typical 600,000-700,000 tonnes nationally to potentially 300,000 tonnes. Hazelnut prices doubled, reaching $17 per kilogram—up 120% year-on-year. Giresun's lower-elevation orchards below 300 meters survived better than neighbors, but the crisis revealed how climate change is reshaping the geography that made hazelnut dominance possible.

By 2026, the Rainforest Alliance predicts production will shift away from traditional zones below 250 meters toward the Western Black Sea and higher altitudes. Giresun faces the successor's dilemma: the same mild coastal climate that Greeks chose for cherries 2,600 years ago now threatens the hazelnut monoculture that replaced them.