Kayakoy … Turkey
I know this is not my usual thing that I talk about, but some of you know that I was in Turkey for a while, and I wanted to share with some of you a spectacular place I was always at … you really should be there to really appreciate it, BUT these photos on the link will give you a very good idea of it. A very good friend lives there, as do a few others, but it is protected so they cannot change anything of the ‘homes’ but they can obviously make it very nice, as my friend did with his home .. It is sweet and adorable … he also has a hotel, the picture above is the pool and bar area, where live bands play, this used to be a field, but he still had to stay within low building.
It is an eerie place, very quiet, mainly goats bleeting, its like you can touch the ‘past’ and imagine how it was to have lived there in that time soo long ago.
I loved it there purely for them reasons, I took lots of my own photos, but the link is far better and each picture is described with emotion and awe, just as I would like to express it (saved me a job really) LOL
So read below, and look at the pictures, I know you will love them just as much as me, please let me have your thoughts, I would love to hear what you think.
The history of Kaykoy - Turkey.
The earliest recorded name of the city is what is no the Kaya Valley was Karmilassos, a Lycian city probably of minor importance within the federation. Most remaining signs of that city are seen today in the north of the valley but there are several tombs still surviving amongst the houses of what is now called Kaya.
Between the Lycian and the current Turkish names, the town called Levissi and became an important town on the Turkish coast. The original Levissi (actually "Lybysium" at the time) had been the island we now call St Nicholas or Gemiler Island. It is thought that the Greek speaking Christian population fled the island around 700AD as the coast fell into the hands of pirates and raiders. They fled to the hidden and easily defended valley just a mile or two inland and there they settled in comparative safety.
There are few remains from that early settlement left, the ruins you see today date from just a few hundred years ago.
The new Levissi prospered and grew, and on a map by John Speed dated 1626, Levissi is distinctly annotated but Megri (Not renamed Fethiye) not at all.
At its peak, the town had about 2000 houses, two large churches, 3 or 4 small churches and perhaps 30 chapels. There were half a dozen shops, a printing press producing a local newspaper and two schools. The buildings and the roads improved over the years as did the water supply. Most houses collected rainwater from the roof to be stored in cicterns holding from 4-8 ton of water. The public suplly came from Hisaronu, first in covered channels, then in clay pipes, ald latterly in steel pipes. That water fed several tanks and at least 4 public fountains, two of which still in use today.
Levissi continued to prosper until the end of the first world war when, for reasons too complicated to be properly covered here, civil war broke out between the Greek and the Turkish populations of western Anatolia. There was no recorded fighting in this region but many of the young men of Kaya went to the front and never returned.
The founder of modern secular Turkey was Kemal Ataturk and it was he who led the Turks to victory and drove back the Greeks.
The British brokered a peace treaty in September 1922 and as a solution to remaining tensions the treaty of Lausanne in 1923 agreed an exchange of populations based on religion. Some 1,200,000 Greek speaking Christians were to be sent to Greece whilst 400,000 Turkish speaking Muslims were displaced from the Macedonia region of Greece to be resettled in Turkey. In the months following the treaty, many of the Greeks left voluntarily, some to Greece proper and some to Kastelorizon and on to Australia.
Following the treaty, the compulsory (but not violent) eviction of the remaining Greeks took place and the valley was left with only the peasant farmers scattered around the valley overlooked by a "Ghost Town".
Attempts to settle the folk from Macedonia failed, only a handful stayed in the valley; those people had been farmers and needed land. They may also have been influenced by rumours that the Greeks had poisoned the wells.
The roofs of the houses were of straw and mud and without regular maintenance were prone to weather damage, one by one they collapsed beginning the slow deterioration of the houses. Some timbers were no doubt pilfered but the death blow came with the earthquake of 1957 after which the local government gave permission for the local farmers to use the remaining timbers for reconstruction. The use of stone in vernacular architecture is rare in Anatolia so over the years the beautifully built, but slowly decaying town became known as The Stone Village or Kayakoy.
In the mid 1980's the Government recognized the importance of Kaya as an historical site and it is now protected as such.
This may give you some insight about me, I may be mischievous at times, but I do know beauty when I see it, along with the historical factors in most cases.
I really hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed showing this to you, if you ever get to Turkey .. This is one of the places you must see, along with the ‘fairy’ place …. Another story!
link ... http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Middle_East/Turkey/Aegean/Mugla/Kayakoy/photo1089855.htm
(copy and paste into browser)
Laters Tatty xx
