Artisan preserves Thrace’s transport heritage
KIRKLARELİ
A traditional craftsman from the northwestern province of Edirne is keeping the region’s transportation heritage alive by creating detailed wooden miniature models of historic horse-drawn vehicles and showcasing them both in Türkiye and abroad.
Özcan Abacı, a Culture and Tourism Ministry-recognized traditional crafts artist, has spent the past 36 years producing scale models of talika carriages — four-wheeled, covered horse-drawn wagons once common in Thrace — as well as phaetons and agricultural equipment.
The 60-year-old artisan, who works as a health technician at the Sleep Disorders Center of the Trakya University Faculty of Medicine Hospital, began his woodworking journey in 1990 with the support of late Edirne Governor Fahri Yücel.
