Kayaköy
The Kaya valley is just a ten-minute drive from Ölü Deniz yet a million miles away in terms of ambience and the typical visitor of this area.
The valley floor is surrounded by the peaks of the surrounding mountains which stretch to the very ends of the Fethiye Peninsula. Tracks and single-track roads wind along the valley floor through tiny hamlets, past fields full of wheat and tobacco and finally onto the region’s secluded beach at Gemiler.
Kayaköy is, of course, now famed for being the inspiration for Louis de Bernières novel Birds without Wings. The Greek village of Kaya was abandoned following the forced exchange of populations agreed between Turkey and Greece in 1926. Until then it had been a thriving community for centuries and at the time of the exchange had a population of 20,000. In the intervening years the town has been left to crumble into disrepair leaving in its wake an eerie and fascinating ‘Ghost Village’.