Kaya Valley Articles
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SOUR PLUMS AND SWEET CUSTOM
Daily Telegraph, 15th March, 2008
Not far from the tourist crowd, Jeremy Seal finds romance in Greek Christian ruins while revelling in an authentic rural culture.
‘Try them with salt,’ urged Gonul, caretaker-owner of our Turkish holiday villa. If there was much to delight us about Kaya – the charming restored stone house where we were staying as well as the valley’s wealth of unrestored ones, comprising some of the most impressively affecting ruins in Turkey – then nothing had puzzled us quite like the plums. It was early June, and old men hawked these dayglo marbles at roadside stalls throughout this Arcadia of olive groves, orchards and low-walled kitchen gardens brimming with peppers and aubergines. Curious, we bought a bag for one new lira, or 40p.
‘Sour or what!’ spat one daughter after the briefest nibble. The unripe plums lay about the villa, doubling as missing solitaire pieces until Gonul explained how this local delicacy was best enjoyed. And then they lay about some more.
It wasn’t the plums, then, which endeared us to Kaya, a rural haven above the port town of Fethiye, but what they seemed to indicate; that an authentic country culture survived here despite the charmless sprawls built just beyond the protecting belt of pine forest to serve Turkey’s most popular beach at nearby Olu Deniz. These concrete resorts, Hisaronu and Ovacik, are home to the foam party and the Full English (complete with ‘Waitrose bacon’). Hard to believe, then, that from our wide-roofed wooden balcony barely two miles away we watched an elderly woman harvesting her half-acre of spring wheat with a scythe. A pair of nesting little owls called from the overgrown cottage ruin next door. Swallows dip-dived the pool and a dance of fireflies rose with the dusk.
The Kaya valley’s intact rural rhythms and abundant wildlife, its network of walking paths and al fresco family-run restaurants commend it as a miniature Anatolian Umbria or Dordogne; a welcome reminder, despite the unchecked villa developments wrecking swathes of the country’s southwest coast from Bodrum to Kalkan, of the captivating bucolic seam which still runs through Turkish culture. But Kaya is best known for its ruins, especially since they inspired Louis de Bernieres’ 2004 epic novel Birds Without Wings. Southwest Turkey is awash with ruin sites – Lycian rock tombs and sarcophagae, Graeco-Roman cities, Byzantine basilicas or Ottoman hans (caravanserais) – where the history is certainly centuries old, and more often properly ancient. But Kaya, which De Bernieres call a ‘very special place’, was abandoned within living memory.
The self-styled ‘ghost village’ on the valley’s southern slopes, once Greek-Christian Levissi, has been left to rot since the town’s estimated 6,000 inhabitants were forced to leave during Turkey and Greece’s exchange of religious minorities in 1923. As such, it is a movingly ‘unimproved’ memorial to this momentous ethnic reshuffle, which uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and marked the end of the Christian presence in Anatolia dating back to St Paul’s missionary journeys. We walked the hillside shells of some 2,000 roofless houses scattered with chapels, two basilicas and a school, the exterior walls stripped of their whitewash. We peered into interiors choked with fig and pine trees, the painted walls now faded to the faintest blue, hearths and the chimney stacks above them collapsing to rubble. And in the grounds of the lower basilica we found the ossuary, the bones still in place, as a battered yellow sign went some way to explaining.
Turkey’s uncertain relationship with its Christian heritage may account for the fact that Kaya, far from boasting an interpretive centre or even village museum, does little to explain itself beyond those signs in questionable English. We did, however, find a private exhibition attached to Faruk and Selma Bozdag’s Sarnic (Cistern) Restaurant on the edge of the Levissi ruins. The first-floor room was packed with evocative bric-a-brac of the sort which would have been commonplace in this prosperous town at the time of the exchanges; old clocks and guns, portraits of the local priest, tomes of Ataturk’s speeches, inkwells and quills, braziers and telescopes, Singer sewing machines, gramophones and piles of old 78s. Then we ate. Selma’s vast range of mezes (starters) included rarities like Circassian chicken with walnut and tahini, Armenian potato cakes with chickpeas called topik, and stuffed courgette flowers. A culinary hymn to Anatolia’s former cosmopolitanism, the meal was also a magnificent riposte to the shameful Full English on offer beyond the pine trees at Hisaronu.
One day, we set out along a marked path to visit the monastery at AfKule, abandoned at the same time as Levissi and largely unknown except to locals ever since. We passed fields strewn with red poppies and tortoises to climb through a forest of pine and wild pistachio. The monastery clung to a cliff-face, with rock-cut steps rising past store rooms, cells and faintly frescoed chapels to a wide ledge where rain water was channelled into cisterns below. In the walled courtyard, where bearded priests had once contemplated eternity, or at least the finest of sea views, we sat in the shade of a carob tree and picnicked on crumbly white cheese, olives and tomatoes.
Another outing took us down to the cove at Gemiler where we swam before taking a boat across the narrow strait to the uninhabited St Nicholas Island. A centre of early Byzantine devotion, it was littered with the ruins of fifth-century basilicas. Snakes rustled among the cobwebbed holly oaks and olive trees which had pushed their way between the skewed ashlar blocks.
That evening found us in the garden of the family-run Kinali Restaurant a short walk from the villa. We installed ourselves on a cushioned kosk or raised wooden eating platform shaded by an apricot tree while the owner, Erkan Bey, cooked our kebabs on the raked embers of a wood fire. Erkan’s father emerged from the fields to present us with an armful of freshly cut chickpeas. We shared the chickpeas, podding and eating them raw, with the English couple on the adjacent kosk. They had swallows nesting in their villa bathroom. ‘Four babies,’ said a wide-eyed Nick, far more enthralled by this little miracle than any bathroom inconvenience. ‘They’ll have flown in ten days’. Lucky them, thought we, who were flying long before and would miss everything about this truly special place. Except perhaps the plums.
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PRETTY VACANT
Sunday Times Travel Magazine, May 2009
Goats graze in a ghost village. Waves break on an empty beach. Jeremy Seal and family fall for the perfect Turkish playground, far from the package crowds.
The Basilica of the Virgin Mary in Kaya, southern Turkey, was turning to dust before my eyes. Powdered plasterwork fell from all across the addled ceiling. The swooping martins had learned, I noticed, to avoid these dusty plumes by angling their wings. Outside, as a rusting yellow sign haltingly explained, a pile of bleached bones mouldered down in the charnel house.
There’s no escaping the past in Turkey, with perhaps a greater volume of antique sites than anywhere else on earth. Greco-Roman cities like Ephesus and Aphrodisias, Phrygian temples, Lycian rock tombs and pillar sarcophagae, Byzantine monasteries, Cappadocian rock chapels, Ottoman citadels and caravanserais and much else besides ensure a pervasive, sometimes shocking sense of melancholy is inscribed across Anatolia, but nowhere more poignantly than at Kaya. Levissi, as the town was known to its 6,000 or so mainly Greek Christian residents, was abandoned overnight in 1923 with Turkey’s forced exile of its Christian populations, so ending a presence dating back to the 1st century missionary journeys of St Paul.
Kaya, after decades of neglect, has been drawing increasing numbers of European holidaymakers of late. Nor are the Levissi ruins, a hauntingly unimproved reminder of the ethnic tragedy which took place here barely a lifetime ago, the only lure. The wider setting, on a bowled plateau hemmed in by pine forests above the port of Fethiye, is one of rustic and tranquil enchantment. Low-walled kitchen gardens brim with peppers and aubergines, while birds and butterflies flit among the ruin-strewn orchards. There are olive groves threaded with walking trails. Al fresco restaurants stand in the shade of mulberry trees. Many outlying hamlet houses and farmsteads – though the original township ruins have so far remained largely untouched – have recently been restored to provide villa accommodation.
After a recent stay in an old stone house, once home to an aga or local lord, my own family joined the swelling ranks of those seduced by Kaya’s tumbledown country charm. From the wide-roofed wooden balcony we watched a neighbouring villager harvest her half-acre of wheat with a scythe while a pair of nesting little owls called from the overgrown cottage ruin next door. With swallows dip-diving the pool and the dusk dance of the fireflies, we were in an Anatolian Umbria. Good news for those who have all-too-often found themselves – at Didim or Kusadasi, Hisaronu or Marmaris – in a Turkish Torremolinos.
The story of the so-called ‘ghost village’, and the momentous geo-political events leading to its abandonment – Gallipoli in 1915, the Turkish victory over the invading Greeks in 1922 – are the subject of Louis de Bernieres’ 2004 epic novel Birds Without Wings. De Bernieres considers Kaya ‘a very special place’. Walking the atmospheric and extensive ruins, as we did on several occasions during the course of our stay, it was easy to see what had impressed the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. At dusk, the only sound was the scrape of a tortoise bottoming its undershell on the poppy-choked cobbled lanes. Sagging hearths rose to tottering chimney stacks above the roofless shells of the town’s 1,000 or so houses, the faded blue walls of the interiors now choked with fig and pine. Patterned mosaics of black and white pebbles topped the bone-dry cisterns. Jays flashed blue among the fountains. Beyond the pine-clad slopes above the last of the houses, whitewashed chapels topped the heights.
The wonder was that De Bernieres’s book had had so little effect upon the place. The site’s ticket seller continued to operate from a wobbly table he set up outside the Basilica every day, at a time that suited him, rather in the manner of some period polling station. It was the middle of our stay by the time he eventually sold us tickets. They each cost £1.50, children free, to cover the whole week. There was nothing in the way of a visitors’ centre. The village museum had long since closed down. We did find a private exhibition attached to Faruk and Selma Bozdag’s Sarnic (Cistern) Restaurant, one of very few outfits operating within the Levissi ruins. The first-floor room was packed with period bric-a-brac typical of this prosperous town in the 1920s; old clocks and guns, portraits of the local priest, tomes of Ataturk’s speeches, inkwells and quills, braziers and telescopes, Singer sewing machines, gramophones and piles of old 78s.
We ate outside amongst the vine-strewn remnants of tottering walls. Selma’s creative range of mezes (starters) – Circassian chicken with walnut and tahini, Armenian potato cakes with chickpeas called topik, and stuffed courgette flowers – were a culinary reminder of the remarkable cultural diversity that that the Ottomans had fostered, only for it to die with the abandonment of places like Levissi.
We soon got to know many of the residents, not least ex-pat John Laughland who had been among the first to settle here back in the early 1990s. John and his wife, Bea, led us one day to Af Kule Monastery, which had been largely unknown except to locals ever since its abandonment along with Levissi. We passed fields strewn with red poppies to climb through a forest of pine and wild pistachio. The monastery clung to a cliff-face, with rock-cut steps rising past store rooms, cells and faintly frescoed chapels to a wide ledge where rain water was channelled into cisterns below. In the walled courtyard, where bearded priests had once contemplated eternity, or at least sea views to die for, we sat in the shade of a carob tree and picnicked on local wine, cheese and olives, tomatoes and cucumbers.
At nearby Gemiler cove, a local boatman ferried us one morning across the narrow strait to St Nicholas Island. A centre of early Byzantine devotion, the uninhabited islet was littered with the ruins of fifth-century basilicas where our daughters chased lizards. Cobwebbed holly oaks and olive trees had pushed their way between the skewed ashlar blocks. And from the summit, an extraordinary cloistered walkway, its roof long since collapsed, made a stately descent to the island’s far end.
Kaya’s original atmosphere, rich with unpackaged historical atmosphere and Turkish rural tradition, soon felt precious. And all the more so once a drive beyond the protective belt of pines, just two miles to the east, provided us with a reminder of the unchecked development sprawls taking place elsewhere in Turkey. Here, on the heights above Olu Deniz, one of Turkey’s most popular beach resorts, the former villages of Hisaronu and Ovacik touted foam parties, wide-screen football and unrelieved diets of Full English breakfasts.
No such attractions were on offer back at Kaya’s family-run Kinali Restaurant. Instead, we installed ourselves on a cushioned kosk or raised wooden platform shaded by an apricot tree while Erkan, the young owner, cooked our kebabs on the raked embers of a wood fire. A passing farmer, who turned out to be Erkan’s father, handed us an armful of freshly cut pods. We identified the gift as chickpeas, podding and eating them raw while our daughters chased Erkan’s children around the garden. The chickpeas were sweet.
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DE BERNIERES’S NEW WORLD
Sunday Times, 4th August 2004
The reviews may be mixed, but the setting for this summer’s hot novel is inspiring, says Jeremy Seal
The Church of the Virgin Mary in Kaya, Turkey’s so-called ghost village, was gently shedding its plasterwork. It fell in plumes and tiny chunks from the high windowless interior with a series of little thuds. Nesting birds, rain and bleaching sun were taking their continued toll across this hillside town of some 2,000 buildings as they had done since it was abandoned in movingly shameful circumstances eighty years ago. Outside, the only sound was the scrape of a tortoise bottoming its undercarriage on the poppy-choked lane’s high cobbles.
Melancholy is par for the course among Turkey’s numerous ruin sites – Greco-Roman cities like Ephesus and Perge, Ottoman citadels, Byzantine basilicas – but nowhere is the sense more poignant than at Kaya, formerly known as Levissi by its Greek Christian majority. Unlike most such sites, where the history is ancient, Kaya was abandoned in living memory. It was from this town of some 6,000 people that the Christians were forcibly deported when Turkey and Greece agreed to exchange their religious minorities in the 1920s, with several million people being moved either in the formal exchanges or as refugees during the preceding war. These momentous tragic events, though they are little known in the West, marked nothing less than the end of the Christian presence in Anatolia dating back to the 1st century missionary journeys of St Paul.
The forgotten story of Kaya’s abandonment looks set to recirculate with a vengeance, with this week’s publication of Louis de Bernieres’ long-awaited new epic novel, Birds Without Wings, which is set in the town in the years leading up to the exchanges. If the experience of Cephalonia, setting of de Bernieres’ last novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, is anything to go by, Kaya can expect to be catapulated from its sleepy position on the margins.
The good news is that Kaya seems largely unaware of its prospective celebrity which means the development as a sophisticated heritage experience looks unlikely for the time being. The ruins boast nothing approaching an interpretive centre, nor a guide book and the self-styled museum is a sales room for a range of plaster-cast shepherdesses. Tickets (£1.50 each) are sold from a rickety table which the site guardian sets up every morning outside the church (as if he’s presiding over an old-fashioned polling station).
He was not yet up when I arrived after an early breakfast. Among the ruins, where visitors are free to wander at will, I encountered only an old man milking a goat. The elements had stripped the whitewash from the exterior walls of the houses, the grey stone and render streaked momentarily blue by passing jays. The roofs had disappeared, the tiles and timber scavenged by Turks to furnish their smallholdings in the adjacent valley. Inside these hillside shells, fig, acacia and pine trees now grew. Alcoves, hearths rising to ornate chimney stacks and faded expanses of blue paint survived to evoke the lives of their one-time inhabitants. In the palpable atmosphere, it was easy to see what had inspired De Bernieres.
I looked out across the valley, a patchwork of olive groves, pine woods and low-walled smallholdings; it did not surprise me that deportation had caused such heartbreak for the Greek residents. An exceptionally beautiful place (though the authorities would do well to institute effective building controls right across the valley without delay), Kaya has become increasingly popular with holidaymakers on the hunt for rustic self-catering accommodation in a tranquil rural setting. It’s an Anatolian Umbria, a haven for birdlife and spring flowers, complete with a scattering of open-air village restaurants where meals are taken on wooden divan platforms shadowed by fig trees.
I was staying at the irresistibly rustic Beatrix Cottage which John and Bea Laughland restored after moving to the valley in 1991. One day, we looked in on their 95-year-old neighbour, Aysenina. She lived alone in a rickety cottage, and reckons she was 14 when the Greeks were ordered to leave. Much of her memory had gone, leaving only an old wooden chest carved with a floral motif which stood in her front room. It was a wedding trunk which her Greek friend Maria, unable to take it with her, had left to Aysenina in the upheavals. Aysenina did not know what had happened to Maria in the intervening years.
I often returned to the ruins, mostly in the cool of the evening when I could smell the thyme and oregano underfoot, and wondered which had been Maria’s house. I wandered among chapels, found what remained of the school, and peered into broken water cisterns which were topped by stone mosaics. Outside one church I found an empty ossuary; it was from here that the Greeks had supposedly removed the bones of their loved ones to accompany them into exile. Kaya was profoundly evocative, but as a place where Christians and Muslims had once lived alongside each other, it had acquired a particular resonance of late. It was a standing memorial to a more harmonious time, but one that can expect to find itself at the centre of a new kind of attention. It is to be hoped that its unique atmosphere – of natural beauty and extraordinary emotional resonance – can somehow be preserved. ‘I would hope that Kaya will become something of a monument to what has been lost,’ says Louis de Bernieres. ‘And a symbol of what could be regained.’