Devrek

Devrek

The local population of Devrek, consisting of Armenians and Greeks, came under Ottoman rule in 1348 and was largely Islamized. It is first mentioned in Ottoman records as a village with 60 households in the Bolu Sanjak in the 1519 census and as a 118-digit village in the 1568 census. Although it was a mutasarrifate of Bolu until 1692, and after 1692 it became a voivodeship with the strengthening of the notables, this period ended with the murder of Devrek notable Molla Ali in 181. The center of Devrek town, which was merged with Çarşamba township in 1887 and became a township under the name of Hamidiye, must be Nefs-i Yılanca, which is a little further north of today's settlement. According to the 1870 Kastamonu Province Yearbook, of the population of 7,647 people, 7,500 were Muslims and 147 were Christians, and for 1,853 Muslim households in the city, there were 6 Greek and 4 Armenian households. In 1910, on the grounds that many Hamidiye names given to Sultan Abdülhamid caused confusion, it was renamed Devrek and became a district of the independent Bolu Sanjak with its 123 villages. In 1920, it became a district of Kastamonu and in 1924, it became a district of Zonguldak. Devrek district, which today consists of 4 municipalities (Çaydeğirmeni, Devrek, Eğerci, Özbağı), 15 neighborhoods and 78 villages, has a population of 61,351 according to the 2009 census.