Ritebook — Discover Amazing Facts, History, Travel & Culture: Kayakoy

Kayaköy is an abandoned village located 8 km south of Fethiye, in southwest Turkey's old Lycia Province. The town's name, which was originally in Ancient Greek, was Livissi. It changed to Koine Greek during the Roman period. In the Middle Ages, it became Byzantine Greek and then Modern Greek before its final evacuation in 1923.

Ghost city Turkey

Kayakoy Turkey

Kayakoy, Turkey's ghost town, is one of the abandoned places in Turkey.

The region's inhabitants had converted to Christianity during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Following the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923, the Greek Orthodox residents of the town were exiled That treaty included the Protocol on the Population Exchange between Turkey and Greece.n that treaty. It prohibited the return of any previous Greek Orthodox refugees to Turkey (including those who had fled Kayakoy) and required that any Orthodox Christian citizens remaining in Turkey move for Greece (except for those living in Istanbul).

The treaty required that all Greek Muslims permanently flee Greece to Turkey. This requirement did not apply to Muslims who lived in Greek Thrace. Exiled Muslims from Greece found Livissi Kayakoy inhospitable, and they quickly decamped to leave the hillside village. This ghost town is now preserved as a museum. It consists of hundreds, if not all, of standing Greek-style homes and churches that cover a small mountainside. They serve as a stop for tourists visiting Fethiye or Ölüdeniz.

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Kayakoy Turkey

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Livissi/Kayakoy village

Fethiye to Kayako — Livissi was probably where the people of Byzantine Gemiler Island fled to escape pirates. After an 1856 earthquake and a major fire in 1885 destroyed nearby Fethiye, also known as Makri, the town experienced a revival. In the village and on the plain, more than 20 churches and chapels were constructed (Taxiarhes, the Upper and Panayia Pyrgiotissa, and the lower churches – St Anna and St George, respectively). In Kayakoy's history, many of these structures are still in ruinous and semi-ruinous condition. According to Greek and Ottoman sources, the village population exceeded 6,000.

Kayakoy residents were persecuted along with Greeks from nearby Makri (Fethiye) as part of a wider campaign against all Ottoman Greeks (cf. Armenian genocide). Makri was the first place where persecutions began in this area in 1914. Many Kayakoy families were later deported to Denizli (around 220km away) by Turkish authorities in 1916. They were subject to a variety of atrocities, tortures, and even death.

In 1917 and 1918, two more exile periods followed. Families were forced to march for fifteen days from Denizli to Acipayam in 1917. The last group was a group of elderly women and children who had not left the area. The roads were littered with the bodies of children and the elderly who had succumbed to hunger or fatigue during that death march in Kayakoy ghost town.

The Turkish ghost village was almost empty of its inhabitants at the beginning of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). The few remaining Greeks from Kayakoy or Makri had to leave their homes to sail to Greece after the war ended in September 1922. Some of them established the refugee settlement Nea Makri (New Makri), outside of Athens. The 1957 Fethiye earthquake destroyed many of the empty buildings in the town.

Turkey ghost

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Ghost City Turkey is now a museum. It also serves as a historical monument. Nearly 500 houses are still in ruins. They are now under the protection and control of the Turkish government. A private museum traces the history of the area. A fountain, which dates back to the 17th century, is located in the middle of the village. Some sources claim that UNESCO adopted Kayakoy as a World Friendship and Peace Village. This is untrue and is most likely a rumour spread by a local tourism council. The Turkish government announced plans for the development of the village on 9 September 2014. It will offer a 49-year lease to Kayakoy that will "partially Open Kayakoy's archaeological site to Construction" and anticipate "construction of a Hotel, as well as tourist amenities that will cover one-third of the village."