Sivas

The city stands on an old crossing of routes between the Anatolian plateau, the Black Sea and the upper Euphrates. It appears in Roman times as Sebasteia, capital of Armenia Minor, and its Christian history is long: the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, soldiers said to have died for their faith on a frozen lake in the fourth century, are commemorated across the Orthodox world. Under Byzantium it was a frontier town, heavily fortified and repeatedly fought over.

Its golden age came under the Seljuks and their successors. As one of the chief cities of the Sultanate of Rum, Sivas gathered caravan trade from Iran and the Caucasus and was endowed in the 13th century with the hospital of Izzeddin Keykavus I and the three madrasas of 1271 that still face the central square. Mongol overlordship followed, then the state of the Eretnids and the ruler Kadı Burhaneddin; in 1400 Timur besieged and destroyed much of the city. Under the Ottomans it was a provincial capital on the eastern road, known for its caravanserais, its carpets and its metalwork.

Modern Turkey's history turns here. On 4 September 1919 the Sivas Congress met in the town's teacher training school under Mustafa Kemal and set out the aims of the national movement, the second of the two congresses that founded the republican struggle. The railway reached the city in the early republican years and brought workshops and industry. In July 1993 an arson attack on a hotel during an Alevi cultural festival killed 37 people, a tragedy still commemorated each year and a lasting scar in the country's memory.

Sivas thinks of itself as a city of the republic's founding, and the congress building on the main square is treated with a seriousness closer to a shrine than a museum. Portraits of Atatürk, national flags and the September anniversary are part of the civic calendar, and the city's role in 1919 is taught to every school class that passes through.

The province has one of Turkey's largest Alevi populations, and its cultural mark is deep. The poet Pir Sultan Abdal, whose verses are still sung to the bağlama, came from a village in Sivas province, and the aşık tradition of travelling minstrels who sing, improvise and debate in verse to the long-necked lute is strong across the plateau. Sivas folk songs and halay circle dances are widely known.

Crafts remain a source of local pride: hand-knotted Sivas carpets and kilims, copper and silver work in the bazaar, and above all the Kangal, the massive pale livestock guardian dog bred in the province to see off wolves, which has become a national symbol. Manners are those of a small, cold, provincial city — formal greetings, generous hospitality, a reluctance to let a guest pay — and the long winter turns social life indoors, to family visits and tea houses.

About 365,000 people live in the city, in a province of a little over 600,000 spread across one of the largest and emptiest provinces in Turkey. That gap tells the main story of recent decades: villages have emptied, young people have moved to Istanbul, Ankara and Europe, and Sivas associations in those cities are large and active. The city itself has grown modestly, with apartment blocks replacing older stone housing.

The economy rests on public employment, the university and hospitals, the railway workshops that have been here since the 1930s, cement and textile plants, and farming out in the province — grain, sugar beet and, above all, sheep. Hot springs support small spa businesses, and iron ore is mined in the province. Wages are lower than in western Turkey and the cost of living is correspondingly modest.

The rhythm of the year is set by the cold. Winter preparations — laying in supplies, sealing windows, storing fuel — are a real part of autumn, and snow regularly closes village roads. In summer people move outdoors to the riverside parks, the tea gardens and the high pastures, where families with village roots return for a few weeks. Students from the university give the centre its evening life during term.

Sivas cooking is plain, meaty and made for cold weather. Sivas köftesi, small grilled meatballs seasoned simply and served with flat bread, grilled peppers and raw onion, is the dish the city is known for, eaten at lunchtime in busy salons around the centre. Lamb cooked in a tandır, a sunken clay oven, until it falls apart, is the festive equivalent, and soups — lentil, yoghurt with grains, tripe — are eaten at any hour.

The plateau's pantry is bulgur, chickpeas, beans, walnuts and pekmez, the thick boiled grape molasses spread on bread with butter or stirred into winter puddings. Madımak, a wild green gathered on the steppe in spring and cooked with onion and a little meat, is a genuinely local speciality that appears on tables for only a few weeks of the year. Pastries and yufka breads are baked in quantity, and the katmer, layered and buttered, is a breakfast standard.

Dairy from the province's flocks is everywhere: sheep's milk cheeses, thick yoghurt, and ayran to drink with meat. Sweets are simple — semolina helva, syrup pastries and dried fruit — and tea is constant, drunk in small tulip glasses in tea houses that function as the city's living rooms through the long winter.