Tutkunlar is one of the seventeen villages of the Hamamözü district of Amasya Province, and of these villages it is the one whose administrative past remains most obscure. The name Tutkunlar does not appear in the list of villages attached to Hamamözü when it became a district in 1990; nor does it figure in the 1993 decision concerning Sarayözü, taken from Çorum. On the other hand, in the address-based population records that begin in 2007 the village appears as part of Hamamözü, and it takes its place in the studies listing the district's villages as of 2024 and in the municipality's list of muhtars. No decision has been found showing on what date, from where or from which village it was separated and joined to Hamamözü. Nor is there any published information on the mosque, school, road or livelihoods of the village, whose muhtar (headman) is given in the municipality's list as Nurettin Doğan.

The District's Changing List of Villages

That Tutkunlar joined later becomes clearer when one looks at how Hamamözü's list of villages has changed since 1990. The list appended to the founding law contains eighteen villages. Of these, Aşağıovacık was returned to Gümüşhacıköy by a ministerial decision in 2008; Köseler and Yeniköy, also named in the list, are counted among the villages of Gümüşhacıköy in 2024. On the other hand, Sarayözü was taken from the Laçin district of Çorum in 1993. For these comings and goings to arrive at the district's present seventeen villages, one more village must have been added to the list, and that village is Tutkunlar. On what date Köseler and Yeniköy left, and whether Tutkunlar's entry had anything to do with their departure, cannot be determined from the sources found.

The Status of the Name

In Bekir Başalan's study, published in 2024, which lists the renamed settlements of Amasya district by district, Tutkunlar is counted among the seventeen villages of Hamamözü but is absent from the table of changed names. This shows that the present name, at least as far as the official lists on which that study relies are concerned, did not replace an older one. There is no written explanation of whether this plural name refers to a family line or to something else. Nor has the name been found in Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's account of the nahiye of Hamamözü or among the villages of the Gümüş province in the accounting register of 1530.

Population

Only once in the series has the village's population exceeded one hundred: the figure of 90 in 2007 rises to 108 in 2008 and remains at 99 in 2009 and 100 in 2010. In the following years a steady decline begins; 87 people are registered in 2013 and 69 in 2016, and a brief pause between 71 and 74 is seen in 2017-2018. The real break comes in 2019, when the population falls from 74 to 52 in a single year. Running between 42 and 48 from 2020 to 2024, the figure drops to 30 in 2025. In that last year 12 men and 18 women are registered in the village.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • 387 Numaralı Muhâsebe-i Vilâyet-i Karaman ve Rûm Defteri (937/1530), II: Dizin ve Tıpkıbasım, Ankara: General Directorate of the State Archives, Prime Ministry, 1997, index (villages of the Gümüş province, register pp. 388-389).
  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, pp. 355-356 (e-book pp. 191-192). https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/1-4/files/basic-html/page191.html

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources