Pendik

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District location in Istanbul

Pendik is a district in the suburbs of Istanbul, Turkey on the Asian side between Kartal and Tuzla, on the Marmara Sea. Its population is 625.365 and its mayor is Salih Kenan Şahin.

[edit] History

There are records of settlements in Pendik going back to the Ancient Macedonians of 5,000 years ago, a Roman settlement in 753 BC, and many more conquests. In 1080, the town was taken over by the Seljuk Turks, and recaptured by the Byzantines in 1086 and so on. During the Byzantine era, the place was called Pantikion or Pentikion, and before that Pantikàpion and Pantikàpeum in Greek (as the town had five walls, or five gates, or both). Pendik was always a retreat from the city, and by the 20th century was peppered with holiday and weekend homes of Istanbul's wealthy.

[edit] Pendik today

Until the 1970s Pendik was a rural area, far from the city. Today Pendik is a crowded mix of working class housing (especially further towards the E5 motorway) with more expensive apartments with sea views along the coast. There is a busy shopping district (with a large street market on Saturdays), restaurants and movie theaters.

Pendik is far from the city and public transport to the city is by slow buses and minibuses, or by the slow suburban trains to Kadıköy. The coast road is fast but does not carry public transport. There is work in the Pendik/Tuzla/Gebze region, which has seen industrial development in the 1990s.

In the 1970s refugees who escaped from the war in Bosnia settled in the Pendik district of Sapanbağları. Apart from naming their streets and shops after their village in Bosnia, these people have blended into the Istanbul working-class lifestyle of the rest of Pendik.

In the late 1990s two private educational institutions were built inland from Pendik, Koç Özel Lisesi and Sabancı University. The area has a Formula One racetrack. There is a high-speed boat across the Marmara Sea to Yalova for people travelling out of the city to Bursa and the Aegean. Sabiha Gökçen airport is near.

Pendikspor is a minor league football team which once famously defeated Fenerbahçe.