Frequently Asked Questions

Mesudiye is a village in the central district of Karaman Province, Türkiye. It lies approximately 15.7 kilometres northwest of the city of Karaman, on the Karaman Plain at 1,022 metres above sea level. Coordinates: 37.253077°N, 33.071293°E.

Mesudiye village was founded in the autumn of 1907. Ninety-four muhajir (migrant) households who came in 1906–1907 from the village of Çayır in the Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık (present-day Dobrich) area of Bulgaria — Turkish families belonging to the Karabağlar oymak — settled on this land after following the Köstence–Haydarpaşa–Konya route.

The name Mesudiye comes from the Arabic word "mes'ûd" (happy, blessed). It was given with the wish that those who would live here might be happy and at peace. The name was given at the end of 1907, when the 94 muhajir households settled (Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 15 December 1907), and it appears in the official village list of 1928.

The village's former name is Durayda. In historical records it also appears as "Muhâcir Duraydası" (Migrant Durayda) or "Ova Duraydası" (Plain Durayda). The name Durayda was given to the area long before the 1907 muhajir settlement; it is an ancient toponym whose origins reach back to pre-Turkic times. It is a unique name, found in no other settlement in Türkiye.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) 2025 Address-Based Population Registration System data, Mesudiye's 2025 population is 415 people. Having reached its highest census figure of 535 people in 1990 (an election count in 1925 recorded 547), the population has declined due to rural migration but has been in a slight recovery since 2020.

The current muhtar (village head) of Mesudiye is Recep Evgin. He took office with the 2024 muhtar elections. Since 1939 the village has had 19 muhtars over 22 terms of office; the longest-serving (20 years, 1999–2019) was Cengiz Özşahines.

Mesudiye is reached from the city of Karaman by road in about 20 minutes. From the Karaman-Konya road you turn off toward the northwest. Karaman can be reached via Konya by bus, high-speed train (YHT) or air. By high-speed train, the Istanbul-Karaman journey averages 5 hours 30 minutes and the Ankara-Karaman journey 2 hours 50 minutes.

Standard Turkish is spoken in Mesudiye. However, the villagers still carry traces of Rumelian (Balkan) Turkish. Its most distinctive feature is the preservation of the "-es" patronymic suffix — as in the surname "Özşahines." The loss of h and the merging of vowels ("muhâcir" → "macır"), along with words specific to Balkan Turkish, persist in daily speech. In 1922, even the teacher Sapancalı Muallim H. Hüseyin Bey recorded that the villagers preserved the manner of speech they had brought from Rumelia.

The muhacir (migrant) oven (in the local dialect "macır fırını") is the traditional bread oven that Balkan migrants brought from Rumelia and carried to Mesudiye. It is built from mud mixed with straw on a platform roughly 1 metre high and 2 metres across. A dome is formed by plastering it with mud four fingers thick; when fired, the plaster reaches a ceramic consistency. The "muhacir somunu" (migrant loaf) baked in this oven stays fresh for days without going stale.

Mesudiye cuisine is a synthesis cuisine where the Rumelian migrant tradition meets Anatolian ingredients. The principal dishes are: Muhacir somunu (traditional bread), Dızmana (a baked dish of phyllo and minced meat / cheese), Bulgur Pilavı (the centrepiece of wedding tables), Kırma (a winter soup of cracked wheat), Sarı burma (a rolled börek) and Dizme (a phyllo dessert with walnut). The recipes are detailed on the /en/kultur/ page.

Traditional Mesudiye weddings last 2 days and 2 nights. On the first evening the women sing folk songs at the groom's house; by day the groom's shaving ceremony is held accompanied by the saz; in the evening a gift ceremony is held on kilims spread out in the village square, the imam prays, and the young men parade the groom through the village with folk songs. Groom's attire: red fez, white muslin, striped shirt, black şalvar (baggy trousers), cepken (embroidered jacket), white sash. Bride: jewelled red fez, silver-thread hoop, velvet çakma, black gathered şalvar.

Mesudiyespor is the legendary village football team of the 1980s. It played its matches at Karaman's Kemal Kaynaş Stadium and became known as the bogey team of Karamanspor and Başakspor, the strong clubs of the day. The villagers would go to the matches by bus, minibus and tractor trailers. Management: Mustafa Bayraktar, Mehmet Çelik, Halil Cankara. Head coaches: Mükremin Alataş, Hikmet Özcan.

There are 54 registered family surnames in Mesudiye village. Common surnames: Ay, Bayraktar, Cankara, Çotuk, Erdoğdu, Gönen, Özşahines, Akan, Evgin, Tezcan, Say. The origins of the surnames are examined in 7 thematic categories: character and strength (Alkan, Çelik, Yılmaz), nature and plants (Ay, Bulut, Kara), animal-bird (Ceran, Kurt, Özşahines), occupation-institution (Bayraktar, Saraç, Cıvataş), watercourse-soil (Akan, Cankara, Gönen), movement-action (Cansever, Gezici, Tezcan) and other (Çotuk, Özdemir).

This site is a cultural and historical documentation site prepared voluntarily by the Mesudiye Village Community. It is coordinated with the Mesudiye Village Muhtarlık (headman's office), and its content is based on family representatives, village elders and academic sources.

The content is based on the following sources: the Karaman Encyclopedia (Uğur Erkân), the Ottoman Detailed Tahrir (Cadastral) Registers (1500, 1541, 1584), TÜİK Address-Based Population Registration System data, the 1907 issues of Tercüman-ı Hakikat and the Konya Provincial Gazette, Gazete Anadolu, Karamandan.com, and the oral-history accounts of family representatives and village elders. Academic sources such as Sir William Ramsay and Gertrude Bell's "The Thousand and One Churches" (1909) were also used.

For corrections or additions, e-mail mesudiye@furkandanis.com. For privacy requests about living people, the content is temporarily removed within 24 hours if requested, then reviewed within 7 days.

The Mesudiye site's /en/ara/ page provides Pagefind-based full-text search. 138 pages (TR + EN + DE, 46 per language; the 404 and search pages are excluded) and 13,000+ words are indexed; it runs entirely client-side and supports Turkish characters.