May 2009

Pretty Vacant

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.

Our eyes were not deceiving us in the warm Turkish summer air, the Greek Orthodox Basilica of the Virgin Mary was turning to dust as we watched. Swooping martins made elaborate patterns, dodging the plumes of powdered plasterwork falling from the addled ceiling. I was entranced, and so was my wife, but our two daughters had spotted something even more extraordinary within a small ruin in the grounds of the abandoned church. 'Look!' shouted our six year-old, Lizzie, fear mingling with excitement in her voice. 'Bones!' The girls had found the charnel house: broken home to the bleached remains ok Kaya Village's past generations. Not for the first time, we'd found something for all the family in Turkey's rich and varied past.

Even though we were close to the crowed coats - just an hour from Dalaman, southwest Turkey's main airport - we felt deliciously alone in low-key Kaya Valley. Perched above the port town of Fethiye, it's scattered with alluring ruins. Turkey seems to have more historic sites than anywhere else on Earth, from the rock tombs and sarcophagi of the original Lycians at places such as Tlos, in the southwest, to the Greco-Roman cities - Ephesus, Aphrodisias - that succeeded them. So widely spread are these ruins. It's hard to visit Turkey without an abiding sense of melancholy, touching rather depressing.

It's at its most haunting in Kaya, which has emerged from decades of neglect as a valley of enchantment, drawing increasing numbers of holidaymakers in search of family-friendly, bucolic authenticity. Nor is its ruined village the only lure: the wider setting , on a bowled plateau hemmed in by pine forests and home to people of great charm, is one tranquil delight. Low-walled kitchen gardens brim with peppers and aubergines, while birds and butterflies flit among the orchards. There are olive groves woven with walking trails, and alfresco restaurants in the shade of the mulberry trees. Many hamlet houses and farmsteads have been restored as villa accommodation. Luckily, the original abandoned township has so far remained largely untouched.

Settling in at an old stone house, once home to an aga (local lord), my family soon 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 wheat with a scythe, while a pair of nesting owls called from the overgrown cottage ruin next door. With swallows dip-diving the pool and the dusk dance of fireflies, it was as if we'd stepped into a Turkish Tuscany. Only those poignant ruins pointed to the grim events that took place here barely a lifetime ago.

Louis de Bernieres' 2004 epic novel Birds Without Wings tells the story of the so-called 'ghost village' and the momentous geopolitical events leading to its abandonment: Gallipoli in 1915, the Turkish victory over the invading Greeks in 1922. Levissi, as Kaya was known to its 6,000 mainly Greek Christian residents, was abandoned overnight in 1923 following Turkey's forced exile of its Christian populations, and so ended a presence in Anatolia (Asiatic Turkey) dating back to the 1st-century missionary journeys of St Paul. De Bernieres considered Kaya 'a very special place'; and wandering the atmospheric and extensive ruins of Levissi, as we did on several occasions during our stay, it was easy to see what had inspired him.

Kaya could so easily have become a symbol of ethnic intolerance, given its past, yet now the welcome to foreigners almost overwhelms. As does the peace: as dusk, the only sound was the scrape of a tortoise bottoming its undershell on the poppy-choked cobbled lanes. Sagging hearths rose to tottering chimneystack above the roofless shells of the town's 1,000 or so houses, their faded blue interior walls now laced with fig and pine. Patterned mosaics of black and white pebbles topped the bone-dry cisterns; jays flashed blue among the fountains. The girls were happy exploring at will, chasing goats from the ruins.

The wonder was that de Bernieres' book had had so little effect on the place. The site's ticket-seller continued to operate form a wobbly table he set up outside the Basilicia every day, at a time that suited him. We were halfway through our stay by the time he was actually around to sell us tickets (Each cost £1.50 - children free - to cover the whole week.)

Nor was there anything in the way of a visitor centre. The village museum had long since closed down, but we were riveted by a private exhibition attached to Faruk and Selma Bozdag's (Cistern) Restaurant, one of very few outfits operating within the ruins themselves. The first-floor room was packed with bric-a-brac typical of this prosperous town in the 1920's: old clocks and guns, inkwells and quills, braziers and telescopes, Singer sewing machines and gramophones, portraits of the local priest and tomes of speeches by Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey.

History lesson over, we ate outside, among the vine-entangled crumbling walls. Slema's meze ranged from Circassian chicken with walnut and tahini, to topic (Armenian potato cakes) and stuffed courgette flowers. The assorted dishes were a culinary reminder of the astonishing cultural diversity fostered by the Ottomans, which died with the abandonment of places such as Levissi.

We soon got to know many of the residents, not least ex-pat John Laughland, who had been among the first to settle her back in the early 1990's. John and his wife, Bea, led us one day on a walk to Af Kule Monastery, largely unknown, except to locals, ever since its abandonment. Passing fields of red poppies we climbed through a forest of pine and wild pistachio to the monastery. It clung to a cliff-face, with rock-cut steps rising past storerooms, cells and faintly frescoed chapels to a wide ledge, where rainwater water was channelled into cisterns below. Bearded priests had once contemplated eternity - or at least sea views to doe for - in the walled courtyard. Now we sat in shade of the carob tree and contemplated a lunch of wine, cheese, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers.

At nearby Gemiler Bay, a boatman ferried us the following morning across the narrow strait to St Nicholas Island. A centre of early Byzantine devotion, the uninhabited islet was littered with the remains of 5th-century basilicas, through which our energetic daughters chased lizards. Cobwebbed holly oaks had pushed their way between skewed stone blocks. And from the summit, an extraordinary cloistered walkway, its roof long since collapsed, made a stately descent to the island's far end.

History wasn't going to dominate proceedings totally , though - not with Turkey's best-known beach just a 20-minute drive away. The resort of Olu Deniz, or 'Dead Sea', is named after its famed lagoon, but it comes with swathes of beach, too. Shallow, still, clear, and edged by the shade of pine trees, it was just the place for Lizzie (who was learning to swim), even if it was a busy spot. One afternoon, we went in search of somewhere wilder, taking the precipitous coast road - chipped from a sheer cliff-face - out past the village of Faralya to Kabak, where the track came to an end. We parked and set off down the path. It was an arduous clamber, but the mountain-backed cove beach at the end of it - deserted save for local campers- amply rewarded the effort.

The next morning, we got up early and decided to make a day of it with a drive to Patara, some 65km further east. The girls played in the surf of the white sand beach - all 20 pristine kilometres of it - and ran up a lengthy ice-cream tab at the beach cafe. Sneaking off alone into the dunes, I came across the stirring ruins (theatre, acropolis, bathhouses, granaries) of the port city where St Nicholas - subsequently our very own Santa Claus - was born. History or beaches, adults or kids, Turkey once more had no problem catering for all.

We returned via Hisaronu, the sprawling modern resort built to serve Olu Deniz. All that separated Kaya from this Turkish Torremolinos, with its foam parties, wide-screen football and full English breakfasts was a belt of pine forest about three kilometres wide. But now was not the time to worry about the future of Kaya. Its unpackaged historic atmosphere and Turkish rural traditions were all ours to be savoured. Certainly, no crass attractions blighted the village's family-run Kinali Restaurant, where we stopped for a languorous dinner. We reclined on a cushioned kosk - a 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. It was a gift of chickpeas. We shelled them and ate them raw while the girls befriended Erkan's children and they all tore around his vegetable patch together. The chickpeas tasted just like this enchanted hidden corner of southern Turkey: sweet and timeless.

HOW TO TRAVEL

Exclusive Escapes has a range of self-catering villas and cottages in Kaya. A week at the Mehmet Aga Evi starts at £563pp (based on four sharing) including flights, transfer, car hire and maid service.