ORIGINAL ARTICLE Mining Heritage and Relevant Geosites as Possible Instruments for Sustainable Development of Miner Towns in Turkey Nizamettin Kazancı 1,2 & Yaşar Suludere 1 & Aysen Özgüneylioğlu 1,2 & Necip S. Mülazımoğlu 1 & Fuat Şaroğlu 1 & Hamdi Mengi 1 & Sonay Boyraz-Aslan 1,3 & Esra Gürbüz 4 & Tahsin Onur Yücel 1 & Merve Ersöz 1,5 & Özden İleri 3 & Hülya İnaner 1,5 & Alper Gürbüz 1,6 Received: 5 December 2018 /Accepted: 26 July 2019 # The European Association for Conservation of the Geological Heritage 2019 Abstract History of mining in Anatolia goes back to the pre-pottery Neolithic in parallel to history of ancient civilizations in the region. Based on archaeological findings, native copper was the first metal used by humans, and right after, it was mined in central Anatolia. The mining of copper seemed to cause both the birth of metallurgy and powerful civilizations (e.g. Hittites, Assyrians, Lydians, Phrygians). Long-time mining of copper, lead, tin, gold and silver formed and left rich and valuable scientific and cultural heritages in Anatolia. They have been used efficiently in archaeological studies; however, miners’ towns need sustainable development now and the mining heritage could be a potential on it. In this study, potential of the mining geoheritages and some relevant geosites have been presented. Keywords Mining heritage . Metallic ore mines . Geoconservation . Public awareness . Anatolia Introduction Anatolia classically is known as the heart of pottery, agricul- ture and mining in the history (e.g. Guerney 1990; Yasuda 2002a, b; Yalçın 2000). As an example, names of four big cities in modern Turkey (i.e. Diyarbakır—copper land; Gümüşhane—home of silver; Tunceli—place of bronze; Zonguldak—underground-sourced voices because of coal mining), twenty small towns and numerous villages, and many mounts and places still related directly to different mines or metals prove that Anatolia has been familiar with mining and metal industry for over centuries (Fig. 1). This was likely to be result of geological complexity of Turkey and its surrounding regions containing many ore-bearing tec- tonic and magmatic units and sedimentary basins formed dur- ing its long geological evolution (Fig. 1). Presently, mining in the country is still continued; however, their activities are not as strong as in the recent past, whereas coal, sand and rock mining are relatively in good level. The number of mining companies has been fluctuated based on legislative regula- tions and economy; for example, research and exploration licences have decreased down to 1500 from 20,000 recently (Toptaş et al. 2014). Except for sand mining, others have been active on and/or near historical mines, together with also hun- dreds of those left as open- and underground-mining galleries (Figs. 1 and 2). Last but not the least, sand mining and rock quarries have majorly destroyed the nature, sometimes sweep- ing important geosites (Kazancı et al. 2005; Kazancı and Kuzucuoğlu 2019), because of necessity of construction material. Active big mines are generally in or around towns known as “miners’ town”. Previous fertility of miners’ towns has faded away because of environmental pollution, old production technologies and privatization caused * Nizamettin Kazancı nkazanci@ankara.edu.tr 1 Jeolojik Mirası Koruma Derneği (JEMİRKO), Onur caddesi 57/2, 06570 Maltepe, Ankara, Turkey 2 Mühendislik Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü, Ankara Üniversitesi, 06830 Gölbaşı, Ankara, Turkey 3 Maden Tetkik ve Arama Genel Müdürlüğü, Ankara, Turkey 4 Mühendislik Fakültesi, Harita Mühendisliği Bölümü, Aksaray Üniversitesi, 68100 Aksaray, Turkey 5 Mühendislik Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü, Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, Buca, İzmir, Turkey 6 Mühendislik Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü, Niğde Ömer Halidemir Üniversitesi, 51240 Niğde, Turkey Geoheritage https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-019-00391-0