Bakras Kalesi stands on a very steep hill cut off on two sides by deep valleys, above the village of Ötençay — formerly Bakras — the largest village of the Belen district. You leave the Antakya–İskenderun road at its 25th kilometre and go west another seven or eight kilometres; a gravel road climbs from the south side of the village, and a footpath leads to the gate on the east front, which is the only way in.
Its history goes back to antiquity. One story told locally credits its building to Dakianus, king of the Amorites, who is said to have raised it in memory of his wife Bağrez, killed when her horse threw her into the ravine here on the way back to Syria. What is documented is the medieval fighting: the Crusaders surrendered the castle to Saladin on 26 September 1183; Saladin's commander Alemüddin Süleyman bin Candar had it demolished in 1191; the Armenians took the area soon after, rebuilt it and made it a strong point again. It was contested between Ottomans and Mamluks until Selim I took it for good in 1516, after which, far from any frontier, it lost its military role.
The plan is roughly square, though the east and south fronts curve slightly. A narrow corridor wraps the south and west; the north side is sheer cliff. The entrance is now completely collapsed, but a corridor runs left from it around to the northwest corner, with cells opening inward and small slit windows outward. Large rooms lie to either side before you reach the central area, which today is filled with fallen stone; the fountain and water tank Evliya Çelebi described, visible until recently, have left no trace. North and south of that central space are two rectangular halls still under their roofs. The northern one has a fireplace in its northeast corner and windows in the north and south walls, and was probably the commander's room; a doorway leads east to a space open on three sides, cool and with a long view, effectively the castle's balcony. The southern hall, two metres higher, was once used as a church, though nothing of its fittings survives.
The castle is built mostly of cut stone, with rough rubble in some of the coarser walling. Traces of the covered channels that brought its water can be made out in the valley to the south, though they are now very faint. Most of the rest has collapsed into unrecognisable heaps of stone.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Hatay as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.1 °C in January to 27.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, June and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (197 mm) and lightest in July (16 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
