Pre-Pandemic, Boating off Kaş

Boating off Kaş off the southern coast of Turkey. Kaş was founded by the Lycians. In the Hellenistic period and under the Roman Empire it served as the port of the neighboring city of Phellus. In 1923, because of the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War, the majority of the population, which was of Greek origin, was forced to leave the town for Greece. This exchange was based upon religious identity, and involved nearly all the indigenous Orthodox Christian citizens of Turkey. The most often given figure for Ottoman Greeks killed from 1914 to 1923 ranges from 300,000-900,000. Abandoned Greek houses can still be seen. In the early 1990s tourism started booming in Kaş.

Residents of Kaş have social isolated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020. Hotels have not accepted guests since the beginning of the outbreak, hopefully postponing bookings until after the disease has subsided. Only health professionals, funeral staff, food suppliers and facilities workers are allowed to enter the town. The resort village remains empty of tourists.

The Turkish lira dropped to a historic low of 7.3677 against the dollar before recovering slightly. The lira is down about 19% versus the U.S. currency since the beginning of the year. Turkey had been hoping for an influx of foreign currency through exports and tourism revenues, but the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply undermined the tourism industry and disrupted global commerce.

Turkey is seeking to re-open its tourism industry, a key contributor to economic growth, for domestic tourists in June, 2020. Foreign visitors are then due to be invited back from some countries in a stepped approach that will include testing and social distancing at hotels and on beaches. Kaş, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, is currently free of the COVID-19, but locals are afraid that visitors from virus hit cities could soon bring the disease to the area as Turkey gets set to re-open its tourism sector.

Kayaköy is a deserted village in south west Turkey. Terry’s niece, Alison Brown joined us for this leg of the trip. She worked for the US embassy in Turkey, and this village was on her bucket list of places she wanted to see. In ancient times it was the city of Lycia, Later, Anatolian Greeks lived here until approximately 1922. The ghost town,
now preserved as a museum village, consists of hundreds of rundown but
still mostly standing Greek-style houses and churches which cover a
small mountainside and serve as a stopping place for tourists.

At the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) Greek inhabitants, mostly elderly women and children, were forced to leave through a march of fifteen days. During that death march,
the roads were strewn with bodies of dead children and the elderly who
succumbed to hunger and fatigue. The exiles of the next year were no
less harsh. In September 1922, the few remaining Greeks abandoned their homes and embarked on ships to Greece. Many of the abandoned buildings were damaged in the 1957 Fethiye earthquake.

Many of the exposed interior walls Still have warn coats of paint that serves as a reminder that this village was occupied not long ago. I imagined residents going about their lives in the narrow Stone alley ways. As Terry and Allison hiked ahead, I stopped to sketch on a bluff overlooking the ruins. I thought that this was a view that a painter like Cezanne would have appreciated. In September of 2014, the Turkish government announced plans to develop
the village. It plans to offer a 49-year lease that will “partially open ‘s the archaeological site to construction” and anticipated
“construction of a hotel, as well as tourist facilities that will
encompass one-third of the village.

Pre-Pandemic: Boating off Kaş

Kayaköy Turkey.