Ascending a lichen-crusted cobbled pathway winding its way through tier upon tier of abandoned, roofless houses, stepped to cope with the steepness of the hillside, it’s hard not to conjure up the ghosts of a not-so-very-distant past.A past when the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of a prosperous settlement some 3,000 strong would have trodden these same cobbles on their way back to their homes after a day’s work or walked them on their way up to the pretty white chapel on the pine- and thyme-scented rocky knoll above, perhaps to light a candle and pray for the blessings of a saint to cure an illness or grant a barren couple a child.
The view from the small, barrel-roofed and whitewashed chapel is both spectacular and moving. To the south, the pine-studded hillside falls away steeply to a sea of the deepest blue, whilst just along the ridge stands a small round tower that was either a Byzantine watchtower or a windmill — or both. On the other side, curving around the north flank of the valley side in a great terraced arc, is the derelict town of Kaya Köyü, or Levissi, as its predominantly Greek Orthodox Christian inhabitants once called it. Especially with a grey, early-morning January mist swirling through gaping apertures once filled by pretty wooden doors and glass-paned windows, caressing chimney pots which have seen no smoke escape them since 1923, and seeping into the empty shells of houses once roofed with red tiles imported all the way from Marseille, even the most cynical of visitors would be hard-pressed not to at least try and imagine this town as it was a mere 89 years ago.
The 1923 exchange of populations
Back in 1923, as part of the internationally agreed exchange of populations between the new Republic of Turkey and Greece, which had become an independent state a little less than 100 years earlier, the Greek Orthodox Christian population of Levissi had to pack their bags, leave the homes which had been in their families for generations and take ship for an uncertain future in a country with whose inhabitants they may have shared a common faith but, oddly, not language. For the people of Levissi, like their fellow Greek Orthodox brethren in distant Cappadocia who were to suffer the same fate, spoke not Greek but Turkish. The multi-faith, multi-race and polyglot Ottoman Empire was full of such anomalous groups, peoples like those of Levissi who did not fit easily into the new criteria required to establish the homogenous nation states the old empire had fractured into.
Perhaps it was this common language (many of the Greek Orthodox Christians elsewhere in Anatolia were, of course, primarily Greek-speaking) that explains why the ethno-religious communal strife, which led to so many atrocities on both sides in the Greek-Turkish war of 1919 to 1922, did not affect the Greeks and Turks who lived, relatively harmoniously, in the idyllic valley that is home to today’s ghost town of Kaya Köyü. That the relations between the Muslims and Christians of Levissi were so good makes the total absence of the Greek Orthodox population all the more tragic and perhaps explains why, if you are susceptible to such things, it’s easy to imagine the spirits of the departed still haunting the skeletal houses and crumbling churches of this unique place.
What might have been
Kaya Köyü, today open to the public as an official site, grew in fame a few years ago when British novelist Louis de Bernieres used it as inspiration for 2004’s well-regarded “Birds Without Wings,” an epic novel based around the lives of the inhabitants of a small community on Turkey’s southwest Mediterranean shore swept up in the tragic events that unfurl during World War I and its aftermath, as first the Allied powers, then the over-ambitious Greeks, in pursuit of a “greater Greece,” invade Anatolia. De Bernieres called Kaya Köyü/Levissi Eskibahçe in his novel, but the disguise is thin, made clear to me not least when, on my most recent visit to Kaya Köyü, I saw a signed photograph of the author in the sitting room of the family who ran the pension where I stayed.
Wandering around Kaya Köyü on a January morning, with the ethereal mist slowly dispersing anemones blooming vibrantly in the verges, the walls of the derelict houses sprouting fig and carob trees, lizards skeetering across the geometric pebble-mosaic flooring of a newly sun-warmed churchyard and busy wrens tut-tutting in the undergrowth, is a joy, albeit one tinged with melancholy and thoughts of what might have been were it not for man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Were the wonderfully preserved cisterns built on the side of each individual house and fed by rainwater from the roof still in use, with headscarved women filling buckets for the household needs, were the man of the house performing his ablutions in the equally well-preserved earth-closets attached to each and every dwelling and were, as they would have been on a chilly January morning, the hearths that have survived in the corner of each and every living room guttering with welcoming flames.
Exploring the ghost town
It’s enough, then, simply to wander through the abandoned settlement, peering into gaping houses whose roofs and floors have gone (a process hastened by the catastrophic earthquakes which hit the Fethiye area in the late 1950s) and where great sheets of blue-painted plaster still cling to the interior walls of many of the 600-plus houses. A couple of attractive churches, however, make natural targets for most visitors. The upper church, in the east of the town, was Taksiyarchis Church. Of uncertain date, it was restored in 1910. The other was once the Church of Panayia Pirgiotissa, though it was used by the local Muslim villagers as a mosque from the time of the expulsion of the Greek Orthodox Christian population in 1923 through to the early 1960s. Although it may date back as early as the 17th century, it was clearly much restored in the late 19th century. Things to look out for include the (now headless) carved eagle relief above the doorway, a bell tower, the black and white pebble-mosaic floor and the faded, but still impressive, moulded plaster relief-work of the iconstasis.
Having just read in my guidebook about the settlement having been so wealthy prior to the population exchange that it could afford to import roofing tiles from Marseille, I was delighted to find, in the churchyard, proof in the form of a broken tile with the letters “MAR” clearly stamped in capital letters on one fragment and “SEILLE” on another piece. A separate shard from the same tile bore the image of a swan, clearly the manufacturer’s stamp. What I hadn’t realized until I did a little bit of Internet research following my visit to Kaya Köyü is just what big business the Marseilles tile was in the 19th century, when they were exported to not only all over the Mediterranean but as far as away as to Australia and New Zealand.
On foot to Ölüdeniz
Just above the upper church is the start of the quite beautiful walk to Turkey’s most photographed beach, Ölüdeniz. Initially wending its way up through abandoned houses, the clearly marked path then enters pine forest before cresting a ridge and dropping down toward Ölüdeniz following an Ottoman-era kaldırım, or mule road. The views, of headlands, coves and the snow-capped peak of Baba Dağı, are sensational, and the whole walk takes only around two-and-a-half hours. From the beachfront at Ölüdeniz, there are regular buses up to the sprawling resort of Ovacık, from where there’s another bus back down to Kaya Köyü — or you can return to Fethiye.
So Kaya Köyü’s Greek Orthodox Christians went, some to Rhodes, others to the outskirts of Athens. They were replaced by Muslims from Macedonia, though many of them apparently soon left as they could not adapt to their new circumstances. The Muslim Turks, who had farmed the immensely beautiful valley at the foot of Kaya Köyü village and who were so sad to see their Christian neighbors depart, apparently believed the houses to be haunted and never took them over, hence today’s “ghost town.” But let’s leave old Levissi as it was, or at least how it was imagined by Louis de Bernieres in “Birds Without Wings.”
“When the town was alive, the walls of the houses were rendered with mortar and painted jauntily in dark shades of pink. Its streets were so narrow as to be more like alleyways, but here was no oppressive sense of enclosure, since the buildings were stacked up on one slope of a valley, so that every dwelling received light and air. In truth the town seemed to have been designed by some ancient genius whose name has been lost, and there was no other place like it in all of Lydia, Caria or Lycia.”
How to get here
Regular minibuses leave Fethiye for Kaya Köyü (via Ovacık/Hisarönü), or you can walk it in a couple of hours on a marked path.
Kaya Köyü: Entry to the site is TL 8 though if you get there early or late and the ticket booths are not open, there’s nothing to stop you wandering around.
Where to stay: There is plenty of accommodation in this idyllically pastoral valley — of best value is the Village Garden (Tel: 0 [252] 618 02 59; www.villagegardenturkey.com), open year-round. Between Easter and the end of October, there are several companies offering cottage/villas for rent, including www.turkeyvillas.com, www.kayaholidays.com, www.karmylassoscottages.com, or try www.villarhapsody.com or www.kayamisafirevi.com for boutique hotel accommodation.
Where to eat: Cinbal (www.cinbal.com): Near to the site is this very popular barbeque joint where you choose and grill your own meat.
Levissi Garden (www.levissigarden.com): Set in one of the old Kaya Köyü houses, it specializes in wines from around Turkey and is very atmospheric, with a log fire in winter and lovely terrace in summer.
