Hereke's carpet factory grew out of the Ottoman court's demand for fine textiles and palace-scale carpets. The town's name is still shorthand for dense, finely knotted Turkish carpets, often made in silk and associated with the grand rooms of Dolmabahçe and other imperial buildings.
For travellers, the factory works best as a craft-history stop. It explains why this otherwise quiet stretch of the Gulf of İzmit became famous far beyond Kocaeli.