Kilis
Turkey's smallest province processed olive oil for 4,000 years before Syrian refugees doubled its population—now 578,000+ have returned home since Assad's fall, and ancient trade routes may reopen.
Kilis exists because olives grow at 900 meters where little else thrives. This narrow province—Turkey's smallest—wedges between the Syrian border and the Taurus foothills, five kilometers from the crossing point. When archaeologists excavated Oylum Höyük in 2018, they found 4,000-year-old olive seeds and basaltic grinding stones: evidence that this borderland has processed olive oil since the Bronze Age, when nearby Ebla exported 700 tons annually and oil cost ten times the price of wine.
The ancient olive economy created infrastructure that modern crises repurposed. After 2011, Syrian refugees flooded through the same passes that once carried olive oil caravans. Kilis's population doubled within a year; at the peak, Syrians constituted 27% of residents. Municipal services—sewage, water, schools—designed for 90,000 people strained under 180,000. The province became a laboratory for integration policy, with Turkish and Syrian women eventually joining forces in olive cooperatives, merging populations around the crop that defined the region for four millennia.
Today, three million olive trees cover 300,000 decares—Turkey's highest-altitude productive groves. The 36 processing facilities continue Bronze Age traditions with modern equipment. Meanwhile, following Assad's fall in December 2024, over 578,000 Syrian refugees have returned home, and Kilis's "Syria Street" empties as shops close. The population is normalizing toward pre-crisis levels.
By 2026, Kilis faces inverse pressure: labor shortages as refugees depart, olive groves requiring workers, and cross-border trade reviving with a reconstructing Syria. Whether the province returns to its ancient function—processing olives for export through whatever political configuration governs Damascus—depends on Syrian stability.