The First Train Sabotage in the Ottoman Empire: Sinekli Affair and Anasta？ Gang

In the last quarter of the 19th century, banditry activities were observed in many parts of Anatolia and Rumelia due to several social and economic reasons. The banditry doings during this term usually formed of rubbery by cutting the roads or collecting extortions from peasants which were incomparably smaller than banditries in the 17th and 18th century. One of such bands were under the leadership of 'Anasta？', one of the Greek subjects, who referred to as "famous bandit” in the archival documents and newspapers of that time. Anasta？, who made a name for himself by abducting people many times got more recognition with this case. He stopped a train going from Sirkeci to Berlin in the middle of 1891, robbed the passengers and abducted German passengers in order to receive a large amount of ransom. The fact that the captives were Prussian citizens gave an international context to the incident, therefore, it came to great importance to get the captives free without any harm. In this work, how bandits performed the train sabotage, how Anasta？ took the German captives to mountains and what happened in that time, the efforts of the Ottoman government and the German Embassy to rescue the captives, the delivery of ransom, the escape of Anasta？ to Bulgaria were discussed in details by the light of archival documents and the data gathered from the press of the period