Kayaköy

‘And thrice the flitting shadow slipp’d away,
Like winds, or empty dreams that fly the day.’

Vergil Aeneid Book VI
The Book of the Dead

Kayaköy or Levessi, as the original Ottoman Christian Greeks who settled the village called it, is a ghostly kind of place. The Greek population (what was left of it) was evacuated after the First World War and returned to Greece as part of the Population Exchanges agreed between the Turkish and Greek governments at the Lausanne Peace Conference of 1923. It is rumoured they cursed the properties that they had to bequeath and the Turkish people who replaced them consequently could not settle. They too left in a second exodus over the next few years.

It is conceivable that ghosts did play a part in what is the indisputable abandonment of Kayaköy by the Muslim Turks who came to replace the expelled Greek residents. But just a part. The story is of course more complicated than that. The new Turkish villagers were tobacco growers accustomed to flat plains rather than the steep inclines of the Tauros mountains. The Greeks were tradesmen and artisans and their departure would have left a huge hole in the commercial life of the once thriving village. Given too that across Turkey (except Istanbul where Greeks were not deported until a few decades later) 1.3 million Greeks were exchanged with around 400,000 Muslim Turks Kayaköy was probably half empty anyway

Whatever the reasons the resettlement did not work. The village was left to native trees and mountain shrubs to repopulate it. Nature abbhors a vaccuum. An earthquake in 1957 added momentum to the downward cycle. Locals were encouraged to take timber and other useful materials to repair damage wrought by the earthquake on their own homes. The stonewalls with hanging fireplaces and chimneys still stand but no cedar wood joists or joinery survive in loco.

What enormous consequences hang on a single thread? What momentous events set in train by the smallest shift? In 1914 much of the Ottoman Government including the Sultan (Mehmet V) did not want to go to war and certainly not on the side of the Germans. A small clique led by Enver Pasha forced the issue.

And so the dominos fall!

Gallipoli > Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) > Occupation of Ottoman Empire > War of Independence > Expulsion of Greeks and Armenians > Declaration of the Muslim but Secular Turkish Republic > etc…. right up to the rise of President Erdoğan today

And here I am wandering the steep, deserted, cobbled alleys that wind between the ruined houses of Levessi. The two once crowded and beautiful Orthodox Greek churches are boarded up pending renovation (it’s been a long time a-pending as well).

I am not a religious man. I am with Atatürk who once said ‘There are times I would wish all religions at the bottom of the sea’. But there is no doubt that one can feel the presence of the departed. Hear the anguished groans, feel the grief and weary resignation of the people shouldering their possessions and starting the long march into an unknown future.

Time has rubbed off the raw edges and deposited a gentle melancholia over the warm stone, through which a vigorous nature thrusts.

It is easy to understand how Louis de Berniere’s excellent novel Birds Without Wings was inspired by Kayaköy, which was the model for Eskibahçe the fictional village where a forbidden love story between Ibrahim a Muslim and Philotei a Greek takes place. The book is set against events of the First World War and the subsequent Independence War and population exchanges.

So join the Greek grandchildren of the original inhabitants who now come to trace their long lost Ottoman roots. Visit Kayaköy if you have not done so. It’s a forty minute drive from Fethiye.

Do it quickly because, as in Bezirgan, the vultures are circling and Muğla Council is sleeping on the job. The ‘Luks’ private villas with swimming pools are springing up around the village. Every wall is topped with sagging canvas to prevent anybody seeing in (or out!). A local who runs a restaurant posted a great little rant on Istagram complaining of a new material that had come to the area ‘fabric walls’.

We are going to seek him out and have breakfast there tomorrow. I need to meet and connect with fellow whingers

“A lovely unspoilt village….’ 2015 Trip Advisor review

Can you spot the rogue building in my slideshow with its fabric walls? The shape of the future. Please read and follow my environmental blog if you want to stop the onward march of illegal building