Founding family · Karabağlar tribe
Earliest documented soldier
The Cankara family includes Mehmet Cankara (1878-1952), Mesudiye village's earliest documented soldier — he served as cavalry in the 1897 Ottoman-Greek War, before the Karabağlar's 1907 migration to Karaman.
The Cankara family is the lineage with the oldest known military past in Mesudiye village. Mehmet Cankara served as a cavalryman in the 1897 Ottoman-Greek War; this date goes back even further than the village's official founding. The family, which has produced two different muhtars (village heads), also governed through a critical period coinciding with the date Karaman became a province.
Son of İbrahim · 1878–1952
Born in Rumeli in 1878, Mehmet Cankara served as a cavalryman in the 1897 Ottoman-Greek War. That war, which overlaps with the period of the Battle of Dömeke, is one of the Ottoman Empire's last great military victories over Greece.
This service date is especially important: Mehmet Cankara fought in the Ottoman army roughly 10 years before the Karabağlar tribe came to Anatolia. While the muhacirs (migrants) were still in Rumeli, this family was already steeped in military tradition.
Mehmet Cankara, who died in 1952 at the age of 74 after settling in Mesudiye village, holds the title of the village's earliest known soldier.
Elected village muhtar in 1963, İbrahim Cankara is the first representative of the family's tradition of governance. His term of office coincides with the early Republican period in which the village's development policies took shape.
Halil Cankara, the family's second muhtar, served between 1989 and 1994. The beginning of his term is especially meaningful: 1989 is the year Karaman gained provincial status. Halil Cankara governed the village during the years of this historic transformation.
Alongside the office of muhtar he also served as a manager of the Mesudiyespor football club, taking an active role in both the administrative and the sporting life of the village.
The Cankara family displays an unusual continuity that begins with a military tradition reaching back even before the village's founding and then continues with the office of muhtar and with sports administration. Among Mesudiye's 54 surnames it holds the distinction of being the family with the longest historical perspective.