A sister-city relationship is a formal link between the municipalities of two towns, established so that they can cooperate regularly in culture, education, trade and the sharing of administrative experience. Amasya Municipality has ties of this kind both within Turkey and abroad, and the earliest of them goes back to the early 1990s, to the twinning with Shamakhi (Şamahı) in Azerbaijan. Yet the date on which each relationship was established, and the document by which it was made, have not been recorded with equal clarity for every town; the municipality's own published list, the tallies in news-agency reports and the council decisions of the partner towns do not always agree. For that reason the protocols that can be traced with dates in official and news sources are treated separately from relationships that are only named in lists or cannot be verified.

The Origins of Town Twinning

Academic literature describes town twinning as a practice that spread after the devastation of war, as a way of building friendship between towns and reconciling their citizens. The first recorded pairing was made after the First World War between the German town of Paderborn and the French town of Le Mans, while international contacts between local authorities became far more intensive after the Second World War. In Europe, links between French and German towns were seen as an instrument of reconciliation, whereas the "sister city" relationships that towns in the United States formed with the rest of the world emerged from the 1950s onward to promote peace and mutual understanding. Over time the weight of these relationships shifted toward cultural, economic and commercial cooperation. According to a news-agency report published in 2010, the practice had gained importance in Turkey above all in the preceding twenty years, and most of Amasya's foreign ties also fall within that period.

In Turkey, a municipality's right to establish sister-city ties rests on Municipal Law No. 5393. Article 18 of the law gives the municipal council the task of deciding on mutual cooperation with local authorities at home and abroad, while Article 74 authorises the municipality to carry out joint activities and service projects with foreign local authorities or to establish sister-city relationships with them. These activities must be conducted in accordance with foreign policy and international agreements, and prior permission must be obtained from the Ministry of the Interior. In practice the procedure runs as follows: the municipal council takes a decision, information is gathered on the town with which the relationship is to be formed, the expected benefits are set out and the text of a protocol is drafted. These documents are sent to the Ministry of the Interior with an official letter from the municipality; the protocol enters into force once it is signed following the ministry's approval. The date on which a twinning was established therefore usually lies somewhere between the date of the council decision and the date of the signing ceremony, and it is not surprising that different sources give different years for the same relationship.

A report by the Anadolu Agency published on 19 October 2010 and based on data from the Union of Municipalities of Turkey stated that there were 715 sister-city relationships initiated with the approval of the Ministry of the Interior, and that the provinces with the most sister cities were Istanbul, İzmir, Ankara and Bursa. In the same tally Amasya, with 13 sister cities, stood just behind Manisa (14), level with Denizli and Tekirdağ. The figure covers not only the provincial centre but all municipalities within the province. In the report's detailed list, six foreign towns are entered for Amasya Municipality, one for Merzifon and five for the township of Yassıçal, which makes twelve in total. Which relationship is the thirteenth cannot be determined from the report; this small discrepancy between the figure and the list may indicate that the tally was compiled in haste, or that a record was counted without being entered in the list. The report also notes that provinces with many sister cities tend to be those with strong tourism potential, and that cooperation based on tourism is a decisive element in these agreements. It may be supposed that Amasya's high place in this ranking relative to its population is connected with the town's identity as a tourist destination; this, however, is an inference.

The Municipality's Own List

For many years Amasya Municipality published a page titled "Sister Cities of Amasya Municipality" in the education and culture section of its website. The earliest archived version of the page, captured at the end of 2013, consists of a short list that places a year before each relationship. The foreign sister cities are given in this order: Shamakhi (Azerbaijan) in 1992, Sapporo (Japan) and Solingen (Germany) in 1993, Tulcea (Romania) in 2002, Lecce (Italy) in 2004, Osh (Kyrgyzstan) in 2005 and Brindisi (Italy) in 2008. The domestic sister cities are listed as the Istanbul district of Beykoz in 2005, Manisa in 2006 and Bursa in 2007. These years form the only consolidated source that makes it possible to follow Amasya's twinning history in chronological order; the page, however, gives only the year and does not go into details such as council decisions or signing ceremonies.

The later version of the page, archived in the summer of 2017, appears to have been created on 17 February 2015 and adds two new names to the list: Berat (Albania) and Prizren (Kosovo), both in 2017. In this version the years beside the domestic sister cities have been removed, while short descriptive texts have been added for each town. Shamakhi is described as the seat of the Shirvanshah state, with a twin-minaret Friday Mosque dated to 743 and the ruins of Gülüstan Castle; Tulcea is noted as a port town on the Danube with a significant Turkish-Tatar minority. Osh is introduced as a market town with a history of 3,000 years, south of the Fergana Valley and known as the "southern capital." These texts do less to introduce the partner towns than to hint at the reasons for Amasya's partnership with them: the Ottoman heritage of the Balkan towns, the Turkish population of Tulcea and the Turkic heritage of Central Asia in Osh are brought to the fore.

Discrepancies Between the Lists

In the provincial tally in the 2010 agency report, Amasya Municipality's sister cities are listed as Sapporo (Japan), Kalmar (Sweden), Osh (Kyrgyzstan), Brindisi (Italy), Tulcea (Romania) and Solingen (Germany). For Merzifon the İncesu district of Kayseri is given. An encyclopaedic list based on the municipality's own page, on the other hand, adds Berat, Prizren, Lecce, Bursa, Manisa and Shamakhi (Azerbaijan), but does not include Kalmar. The municipality's archived pages explain part of this difference: Shamakhi and Lecce were on the municipality's list from the start and appear simply to have been left out of the agency tally. Kalmar, by contrast, does not appear in any version of the municipality's page. It may be supposed either that a council decision was taken regarding the Swedish town without reaching the protocol stage, or that another record found its way into the agency tally by mistake; this, however, is an inference, and no document has been found that confirms either possibility.

A similar situation exists at home. Denizli Municipal Council announced in 2008 that it had decided to become a sister city of Amasya; yet in the 2010 agency tally Denizli's sister cities include Bursa and Tokat but not Amasya or Bilecik, and Denizli does not appear at all on Amasya Municipality's domestic list. It may be supposed that the council decision never reached the stage of ministerial approval and signing; this too is an inference. Beykoz, meanwhile, has been on Amasya's list since 2005 but was not included in the encyclopaedic list. Below, only documented or reported relationships are given, in the order in which they were first established and with their dates.

Shamakhi: The First Sister City and an Older Bond

According to the municipality's list, Amasya's first foreign sister city was Shamakhi, with which a link was established in 1992. The date coincides with the years in which Azerbaijan had newly gained its independence. The sources examined do not record by what document the twinning was established or what joint activities were carried out between the two towns in the years that followed.

Between Shamakhi and Amasya, however, there is a far older and documented bond. According to Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), İsmâil Sirâceddîn Efendi of the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi order was born in 1197 (1782/83) in the village of Kürdemir, in the district of Shamakhi in the province of Shirvan; he studied and later taught in Shamakhi, and after receiving his licence as a deputy from Mawlana Khalid in Baghdad he returned once more to Shamakhi. When the Russians took Shirvan he joined the sheikhs who rose against them; after being arrested and released he left Shamakhi with his family, going first to Akhaltsikhe (Ahıska) and then, in Dhu al-Hijja of the year 1242 (1827), to Amasya. He was first lodged in the Saraçhane Madrasa and then began teaching in a house bought for him in the Yâkûtiye quarter. When his views on rabita (the spiritual bond with the master) caused controversy among the local ulema, he went to Sivas for a time, returned to Amasya in 1256 (1840) and continued the lessons on Baydawi's Qur'anic commentary that he had begun in the Yakutiye Mosque. On his death in 1264 (1848) he was buried, according to his wish, on the mountain ridge above the Şamlular Cemetery. Hüsameddin records that he called Amasya "a bed of learning and scholars" and that to those who asked why he had come back from Sivas he replied, "I fled from ignorance and took refuge in the bed of learning."

Sirâceddîn Efendi's son Mehmed Rüşdü, born in Amasya, would become known by the epithet Şirvânîzâde and rise among the statesmen of the Ottoman Empire. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha, born in Amasya in 1828, served as governor of Damascus and of the province of Syria and as minister of pious endowments, of finance and of the interior; in 1871 he was for a time compelled to reside in Amasya, and he served as grand vizier between 16 April 1873 and 13 February 1874. The encyclopaedia states that after the Shirvan Khanate came under Russian rule the family migrated from Kürdemir first to Akhaltsikhe and then to Amasya; this agrees with Hüsameddin's account. Nor is this the only family of Shamakhi origin: Hüsameddin introduces Es'ad Ahmed Bey (Ahmet Esat Uras), who for many years represented Amasya in parliament in the Republican period, as "Şirvânî Hacı İsa Efendizâde," and some biographical sources also state that his grandfather was İsa Efendi, who came to Amasya from Shamakhi.

No document has been found showing whether this historical bond played any part in the 1992 twinning. It may be supposed that the existence of such a nineteenth-century connection of migration and scholarship between the two towns made the choice easier; this, however, is an inference, and the municipality's descriptive text makes no mention of the connection.

Sapporo and Solingen: 1993

According to the municipality's list, two twinnings were established in 1993. One of them is Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture and Japan's fifth-largest city by population, known for hosting the 1972 Winter Olympics; in the municipality's first list the name is spelled "Saporu." How this link with a distant Japanese city came about, and through what exchanges or visits it was maintained, could not be found in the sources examined; Sapporo is also counted among Amasya's sister cities in the 2010 agency tally.

The other sister city of that year is Solingen in Germany. The municipality's descriptive text presents it as an industrial town on the River Wupper, famous since the Middle Ages for making swords and blades. In Turkey, however, the name Solingen is remembered for another event: in 1993 five members of the Genç family lost their lives in a house in the town set on fire by racists, and the family comes from the village of Mercimek in Amasya's Taşova district. In October 2015 a delegation from Solingen's Alliance for Tolerance and Civil Courage, accompanied by Governor İbrahim Halil Çomaktekin, visited the family in Mercimek, laid roses on the graves and toured the historic sites of Taşova. Speaking during the visit, Mevlüde Genç said that she had not blamed an entire society for her suffering and had tried not to let hatred into her children's hearts.

That the twinning was established in the same year as the arson attack is striking, but no record in the sources examined draws a direct connection between the two. It is also unknown whether the twinning was signed before or after the attack; it may be supposed that a wish for rapprochement between the two towns arose after the event, but this is an inference. The 2015 visit, too, was organised by a civil society organisation in Solingen; no contact between the two municipalities is mentioned in connection with it.

Tulcea, Lecce and Brindisi

The twinning with Tulcea, established in 2002, links Amasya to the Dobruja region of Romania. This port town on the Danube is mentioned in the municipality's descriptive text above all for its Turkish-Tatar minority; one senses that the Turkish presence in the Balkans was decisive in the choice. Tulcea is also among Amasya's sister cities in the 2010 agency tally.

Two towns from the Apulia (Puglia) region in south-eastern Italy joined Amasya's sister cities within a few years of each other. Lecce, linked in 2004, is introduced in the municipality's text as a provincial capital known for its Baroque architecture; Brindisi, which joined in 2008, is described as a port town on the Adriatic coast where ships bound for Greece and the Middle East call. Lecce is absent from the agency tally, whereas Brindisi is included. The sources do not explain why ties were formed in quick succession with two towns from the same region.

Denizli and Bilecik: 2008

Amasya's twinning with Denizli is clearly visible in the records of the partner town. At the second sitting of its February 2008 session, on 5 February 2008, Denizli Municipal Council unanimously approved becoming a sister city of both Amasya and Bilecik, in line with the decisions taken by the municipal councils of those two towns. The meeting was chaired by deputy mayor Şamil Çınar. Speaking on the agenda item, CHP council member Zafer Gönenç said that one should not say no to sisterhood, but that he wanted the concept to be given real substance. Çınar, for his part, stated that the aim was to strengthen social relations among the three towns and to increase cooperation in the cultural and economic fields. With this decision Amasya and Bilecik joined Denizli's sister cities, after Bursa, Tokat, Almelo, Pavlodar, Isani, Brăila, Samara, Rhodes, Betzdorf, Mogilev and Larissa. The news report lists the fields of cooperation in general terms as social, cultural and economic; no specific field such as agriculture or heritage conservation is mentioned. The report does not give the date of the Amasya council's decision, and, as noted above, Denizli does not appear on Amasya Municipality's own domestic list.

Osh: The Central Asian Connection

Osh, situated in south-western Kyrgyzstan, south of the Fergana Valley, is the country's second-largest city and is known as the "southern capital." It lies close to the Uzbek border and, as one of the oldest settlements in Central Asia, has a history of some three thousand years. According to the municipality's list, the twinning between Amasya and Osh was established in 2005. In the 2010 agency tally Manisa also counts Osh among its sister cities, so that the two towns once associated with Ottoman princes share the same sister city in Central Asia.

Visits between the two towns have been recorded on several occasions. According to an announcement by the Governorship of Amasya, Osmonov Zhaparbek, Chairman of the Municipal Council of Osh, the sister municipality of Amasya Municipality, came to Amasya together with representatives of various parties and members of the Kyrgyz parliament as guests at the finals of the 14th Golden Apple (Altın Elma) Composition Competition, and called on Governor Osman Varol. During the meeting the Governor emphasised the strength of the bonds with the Turkic brothers of Central Asia, and the guests said that as Turkey grew stronger, the bonds between the two sides would grow stronger too. According to a municipal news item dated 17 August 2017, Osh Deputy Mayor Topçubayev Asılbek Amanoviç, who had come to Amasya to carry out various inspections, called on Acting Mayor Mehmet Dümen; Deputy Mayor Osman Akbaş was also present. The guest said that, as people of two brotherly countries, they wished to strengthen the bonds between the two cities; Dümen gave him information about Amasya, and the two sides exchanged gifts.

The most recent link in the relationship with Kyrgyzstan dates from 2026. Meeting under the chairmanship of Mayor Turgay Sevindi, Amasya Municipal Council unanimously approved a sister-city protocol with a town in Kyrgyzstan at its regular October 2026 session. According to the report carried in the local press, the protocol envisaged sustainable projects in the social, cultural and economic fields and steps such as tourism development and student exchanges, and the first concrete projects were planned for the coming months. The report does not name the partner town. Whether this was a renewal of the relationship with Osh, in place since 2005, or a new link with a second Kyrgyz town could not be determined from the sources examined. The signing date of the original protocol with Osh has not been found either; all that is available is the year given by the municipality.

Prizren and Berat: Historic Waterway Cities

The initiative linking Prizren (Kosovo), Berat (Albania) and Amasya began during the "International Meeting of Historic Waterway Cities" project organised by Esenler Municipality. Municipal officials from the three towns met at this gathering, and their historical, architectural and socio-cultural similarities were considered a suitable basis for twinning. In April 2017 Amasya Municipal Council decided to become a sister city of Prizren and Berat, and the official procedures on the Amasya side were completed. The matter was reported on 28 May 2017 in a news item published in Kosovo, relayed from the Demirören News Agency (DHA).

In a statement to DHA, Ertan Simitçi, Director of Economy and Finance at Prizren Municipality, explained the origin of the proposal: Turkish tourists coming from Turkey to Kosovo, and especially to Prizren, had noticed that the town resembled Amasya architecturally, historically and culturally; Berat shared the same features with both. According to Simitçi, Turkey's Consulate General in Prizren had also expressed a favourable opinion, and Amasya Municipality's official application would be submitted as soon as possible to the Mayor of Prizren and the President of the Municipal Assembly, after which the official process would begin. The relationship was to be formalised at a ceremony attended by officials of all three municipalities, and inter-institutional cooperation was envisaged to develop tourism and strengthen cultural ties. In other words, at the time the report was published the process had been completed on the Amasya side and had reached the approval stage on the Prizren side.

That same year Amasya Municipality added the two towns to its sister-cities page with the year "2017" and wrote long descriptive texts for both. Berat is portrayed as a town built on both banks of the Osum River, "closely resembling Amasya" with its red-tiled houses ranged along the foot of the citadel, known as the "City of a Thousand Windows" and declared a museum city in 1961; the mosque that Bayezid II had built in the citadel during his Albanian campaign of 1492, and the Sultan's Mosque and Halveti tekke in the Mangalem quarter, receive particular mention. Prizren is described as lying at the foot of the Šar Mountains, taken in the reign of Murad I and finally conquered in the time of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), and the text stresses that the Bistrica River divides the town in two "like the Yeşilırmak, Amasya's lifeblood," and that the Stone Bridge over the river is the town's most treasured structure. In the municipality's eyes, what brought the two Balkan towns close to Amasya was that each was a riverside town rising at the foot of a citadel and preserving Ottoman buildings. The inclusion of Prizren and Berat on this list indicates that the relationship advanced; the date of the signing ceremony, however, could not be found in the sources examined.

At Home: Beykoz, Manisa, Bursa and Dağpınar

According to the municipality's list, Amasya's first domestic sister city was the Istanbul district of Beykoz in 2005, followed by Manisa in 2006 and Bursa in 2007. A shared past links Manisa and Amasya: both were towns where Ottoman princes were trained as sanjak governors, and the municipality's descriptive text refers to Manisa by the epithet "City of Princes." Bursa is introduced as the first capital of the Ottoman state. The sources examined do not record by what council decisions these three relationships were established or how they were conducted afterward.

A domestic twinning that does not appear on the lists is also mentioned in the municipality's news. According to a municipal news item archived in the summer of 2016, Amasya Municipality, through the Hayatcan Association, delivered Ramadan food parcels to the township of Dağpınar in the Digor district of Kars, which it described as a "sister city," and donated a truck. The parcels were distributed by Amasya Municipality's Director of Social Affairs Nuri Keleş and Director of Licensing and Inspection Mustafa Öztürk, with the participation of Dağpınar's mayor Ömer Vargül. Whether this relationship with Dağpınar rests on a formal protocol is unknown.

Merzifon and Yassıçal

The other municipalities within the province have sister cities of their own. In the 2010 agency tally, only the İncesu district of Kayseri appears as a sister city for Merzifon. Some encyclopaedic sources state that Merzifon was twinned in 2001 with the town of Pleasant Hill in California, citing an American newspaper report published that year; the report's headline states that Pleasant Hill was keeping its link with its sister city and that this was met with criticism citing human rights problems in Turkey. The claim that Merzifon established a sister-city link with Dakar, the capital of Senegal, appeared in the previous version of the text on this site; no record confirming it was found in the news and list sources examined. The relationship is therefore mentioned as unverified information.

The same tally lists five sister cities for the township of Yassıçal: Amasya, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Zeytinburnu, Şişli and the Çankaya district of Ankara. From the fact that a small township was twinned with some of the largest municipalities in the country, it may be supposed that domestic twinnings served mainly purposes of solidarity and support; this is an inference, though the Dağpınar example points in the same direction. The report does not give the dates on which these relationships were established.

A Sister Chamber Protocol: Erzurum, 2025

Sisterhood ties are not formed only between municipalities. The Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Erzurum Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a "Sister Chamber" protocol at a meeting held in Erzurum as part of the "Cities That Founded the Republic" programme; the report is dated 25 July 2025. Murat Kırlangıç, President of the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, recalled that Amasya was one of the four important cities in which the foundations of the Republic were laid, and said he believed this bond would open the way to new cooperation in the economic, cultural and social fields. This protocol is a chamber-level relationship, separate from the sister-city ties between municipalities.

Chronology

1827: İsmâil Sirâceddîn Efendi, having left Shamakhi, settles in Amasya with his family (Dhu al-Hijja 1242).

1992: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Shamakhi (Azerbaijan).

1993: According to the municipality's list, twinnings are established with Sapporo (Japan) and Solingen (Germany).

2002: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Tulcea (Romania).

2004: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Lecce (Italy).

2005: According to the municipality's list, twinnings are established with Osh (Kyrgyzstan) and Beykoz (Istanbul).

2006: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Manisa.

2007: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Bursa.

5 February 2008: Denizli Municipal Council unanimously approves becoming a sister city of Amasya and Bilecik.

2008: According to the municipality's list, a twinning is established with Brindisi (Italy).

19 October 2010: A news-agency report counts 13 sister cities for the province of Amasya as a whole.

October 2015: A civil society delegation from Solingen visits the Genç family in the village of Mercimek.

April 2017: Amasya Municipal Council decides to become a sister city of Prizren and Berat.

28 May 2017: The three towns' twinning initiative is reported; on the Prizren side the official process is yet to begin.

17 August 2017: Osh Deputy Mayor Topçubayev Asılbek Amanoviç visits Amasya Municipality.

25 July 2025: The Amasya and Erzurum Chambers of Commerce and Industry sign a Sister Chamber protocol.

October 2026: Amasya Municipal Council unanimously approves a sister-city protocol with a town in Kyrgyzstan.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources