Map of Turkey
FAME is coming to Kaya. Like Cephalonia before it, this small hamlet on the southeast coast of Turkey is about to experience the de Bernières effect; the author’s new novel, Birds Without Wings, is set in the village of Kayakoy, once a thriving Greek settlement, now an eerie ghost village, cottages slowly crumbling into the earth.
Beneath the ruins of Kayakoy the hamlet of Kaya spreads out across the plain, a farmhouse here, a cottage there, and farmland stretching between. On a warm autumn afternoon it looks lushly beautiful; saffron light and khaki fields merging in a tranquil haze.
Kaya seems undisturbed by the ravages of tourism that lie so close by; Olu Deniz swelled to the size of a metropolis, the ramshackle village of Hisaronu torn down and rebuilt in pastel and neon. Kaya’s sleepiness reassures; at least such development is restricted to the coast, with inland areas remaining untouched.
If only that were true. As Turkey’s coastline becomes overdeveloped, rural tourism is set to be the next big thing. Villages and hamlets that lie only ten or fifteen minutes inland offer a different experience to the beach resorts. Small, low-key developments can bring much-needed money and work to rural communities — but there is a danger in Turkey that villages in proximity to the bigger resorts are being colonised; turned into a kind of Hampstead-in-the-Hills with little thought for local life or culture.
In Kaya, it has already begun. Tourists have always come to visit Kayakoy, but until a couple of years ago they came just for a morning, to walk the ruins and stop for a bite of lunch at one of the cafés where each table had its own tiny grill and beer was served in the bottle. That was then. Now Kaya has pensions, self-catering apartments, converted cottages and a helipad. And, most incongruous of all, the Ancient and Royal Kaya Croquet Club.
“It’s actually very jolly,” Miranda Williams, on holiday with her husband in Olu Deniz, told me, when we shared the dolmus (taxi) to nearby Fethiye. “We went on a trip last week for an evening, had a couple of good games and it was something really different.”
Well, yes. It would be, croquet never really having figured much in Turkey’s past. There is something horribly last-days-of-the-Raj about it, all white linen and straw panamas, where the masses are left to the sprawling beach resorts, while those in the know retreat to the hills in a whirl of rattan and Pimms.
It’s easy to see the appeal, of course. Away from the beaches Turkey has a beatific charm; clusters of squat, whitewashed houses basking in the sunshine, the occasional tumbledown shop with glass-fronted cupboards crammed with bread. Goats ramble along the street, women walk back from the fields with bundles of hay on their heads, schoolchildren straggle home in their vivid blue uniforms.
“People love staying somewhere a bit more rural,” Ailsa Fowler, a senior rep with Tapestry Holidays, told me. We met at the Kleo Cottages in Islamlar, a hamlet ten minutes from the busy resort of Kalkan. “They feel they’re seeing the real Turkey; they like to stroll to the village shop to buy food, to see the locals herding sheep, the schoolkids coming home. They can dip in and out of Kalkan if they want a bit of life, but then they can escape again.”
The problem is that once tourism extends into an area, how long can the “real” Turkey last? In Islamlar two huge new villas have been built since I last visited, owned by English expats; vast mansions that dominate the views and radically change the look and feel of the village. Two years ago I drove up to the tiny village of Gokceovacik, some 20 minutes inland from the resort of Gocek, to see two rural villas: now there is a hotel too, built by one of the villa owners. It markets itself as eco-friendly, as do several other rural properties in the region, but the truth is that however much recycling they carry out, and however many sustainable products they use, development means more cars, litter, pollution and disruption.
Page 2: Bezirgan village and need to know ()
