KayaKoy - A World Friendship & Peace Village Where Greeks & Turks Once Used To Live Together

In the 13th century AD some Greeks arrived at the site of Levissi from Dodecanese Islands. There were around 3,500 homes which housed Greeks at first and Anatolian Turks & Greeks alongside after the first stages of its human developmental story. The Greeks were majorly artisans and lived on the hillside while the Anatolians were dominatingly farmers and inhabited the floor beds of the valley. The Anatolians named it as Kayakoy (which literally means the rock village) with which name it’s now known as. 

After the first world war in 1923, the population exchange treatise forced around 6,500 citizens to leave the lands of Kayakoy which aimed to ensure that each nation had only one main religion. The founders had to depart due to the games of humanity. An earthquake in 1957 of the magnitude of 7.1 destroyed the buildings and left it deserted, empty & ruined. It was designated a status of protected archaeological site in 1988 and named as a World Friendship & Peace Village by the UNESCO. It received a Global appeal after the novel ‘Birds Without Wings’ by Louis de Bernières' which was published in 2004 where he developed a fictional village of Eskibahce of whose inspiration lied in the historic district of Kayakoy where Greeks & Turks once used to live together in complete peace & harmony. 

The Nearby Town of Fethiye

Images from sunexpressnews, traveltofethiye, bbci, turkishtravelblog, wikimedia & albatrosyachting