Azure Coast Turkey

Kayaköy has over a thousand stone houses and two churches standing empty since 1923, and most people drive past without stopping on their way to the beach

The Turquoise Coast runs roughly from Bodrum in the west to Antalya in the east, and the name is accurate – the colour of the water in the coves along this coastline is a semi-transparent blue-green that shifts with depth and angle of light in ways that photographs consistently underrepresent. This is a well-known stretch of the Mediterranean. It is also, a few kilometres inland from the main resorts, a landscape with a very specific and largely ignored history.

Kayaköy, a few kilometres from Ölüdeniz, was home to a Greek Orthodox community for centuries. After the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey – a forced displacement that moved approximately 1.2 million Greeks from Anatolia and half a million Muslims from Greece – the village was abandoned, its residents sent to the Greek mainland. Over a thousand stone houses and two churches still stand across the hillside, in varying states of decay. The site is preserved as an open-air museum, and walking through it takes an hour and gives a direct, physical sense of the scale of a displacement that reshaped this entire coastline. Most visitors to Ölüdeniz never visit. The beach is more comfortable.

The Main Sites

Ölüdeniz centres on a protected lagoon – a national park – where a sandy spit separates calm, shallow water from the open sea. The water quality is exceptional. The ridge above the village, at Babadağ Mountain at 1,969 metres, is one of the more established paragliding sites in Europe. Tandem flights with certified instructors last 25-45 minutes and follow the coastline past the Blue Lagoon and Butterfly Valley. The views are extraordinary, and the thermals here are reliable enough that paragliding experience from elsewhere would not have prepared you for this specific flight path.

Fethiye is the working market town of the region, and the Tomb of Amyntas carved into the cliff face above the modern town – dating from the fourth century BC – is better than its relatively brief tourist literature suggests. The covered bazaar sells spices and dried fruit alongside the usual tourist goods. The fish market operates on an informal system: buy fish from the vendors in the market hall and take it to an adjacent restaurant to have it cooked for a preparation fee. The quality is reliably good and the arrangement means you eat what came in fresh that day rather than what the menu has been listing for a week.

Butterfly Valley is a narrow gorge between Ölüdeniz and Faralya, accessible by a short boat ride. The name comes from the tiger moth and dozens of butterfly species that pass through in summer. A seasonal camp at the beach offers basic accommodation. The waterfall at the back of the valley is accessible on foot.

Dalyan sits on a river channel between Lake Koycegiz and the sea. Flat-bottomed wooden boats travel through reed beds to Iztuzu Beach, a long strip of sand that serves as a nesting ground for loggerhead sea turtles – the beach is subject to night-time closures and lighting restrictions during nesting season from May to October. The same river channel passes directly below the Caunos rock tombs carved into a cliff face above the water.

Further East: Kas

Kas is smaller and quieter than Fethiye, with a compact old quarter of Ottoman-era houses and a Lycian theatre from the first century BC at the edge of the harbour. The Greek island of Kastellorizo is visible from the waterfront and reachable by a short ferry. The Kekova Island stretch near Kas passes over partially submerged Lycian ruins from the ancient city of Simena, visible from a kayak or small boat in the clear water.

The Lycian Way

The Lycian Way is a marked long-distance footpath running approximately 540 kilometres around the Teke Peninsula from Fethiye to Antalya. The full route is for serious walkers. Day sections near Kayaköy, Butterfly Valley, and Kas are accessible without commitment to the whole. The best months are April, May, October, and November.

Practical Notes

Dalaman Airport serves the western coast near Fethiye; Antalya Airport serves the eastern section near Kas. Renting a car gives flexibility for inland sites like Saklikent Gorge (one of the deepest canyons in Europe, carved by the Esen River through the Taurus Mountains) and Kayaköy. Dolmus minibuses connect the main towns. April through June and September through October are more comfortable than July and August, which are crowded and routinely above 35 degrees Celsius.