Datça

Datça is a district, as well as the center town of that district, in Muğla Province of Turkey. It is situated midway through the Datça Peninsula, almost 100 km in length, following the ondulations of small bays and coves all along, and practically an island since it is connected to the mainland through an isthmus of only several hundred meters in width. At the very tip of the peninsula is the antique city of Knidos (at the locality called Tekir today).

Both the town and the peninsula were called Reşadiye till recently, in honor of the penultimate Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V Reşad. Today, Reşadiye is the name of one of the quarters of the town along with Eski Datça (literally "Old Datça") and İskele ("the quay") quarters, each separated from the others by a distance of about a mile to form, taken as a whole, the town of Datça proper.

Tourists, oracles, pirates, lepers, almonds, honey and poets

Datça Peninsula is a prized location for tourists visiting Turkey, especially by sea, because of the beauty of its many coves and larger bays, which are favored ports of call for those undertaking the celebrated Blue Cruise along Turkey's spectacular southwest coast. Boats (usually gulets) depart either from Bodrum or Marmaris, or from Datça itself for these tours.

The road from Marmaris to Datça is still a little bumpy, and winds along a fauna that gradually but strikingly changes from that of the mainland. The narrow isthmus after which the Datça peninsula starts is called Balıkaşıran (literally, where the fish could skip), in reference to the extremely short distance from one sea on the one side to the other sea on the other side. According to Herodotus, during the Persian invasions in 540 B.C., the Knidians had sought to dig a canal at this spot as a defensive measure and in order to transform their territory into an island. But an oracle was consulted who reportedly said "If the gods had so willed, they would have made your land an island. Do not pierce the isthmus." Whereupon they surrendered to the Persians.

In Mesudiye, a small village by the coast, there is a jetty owned by community of Mesudiye, the official name of the bay is Hayıtbükü, .

Further away in the direction of Knidos, there is another village called Palamutbükü where a little pier allows boats to moore. Palamutbükü is a holiday village with a long beach. In former times, wine production was the main activity in this area.

Datça has nine villages scattered along the outline of the penisula. These are; Cumalı, Emecik, Hızırşah, Karaköy, Kızlan, Mesudiye, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy. Among these the village of Emecik is of interest for being founded by leprous outcasts of the society abandoned in these coasts by a Spanish galleon in the 17th century, who reportedly later recovered from their affection and founded the village. The physionomy of the inhabitants of this village is different than those of the other villages. Another point of note on the settlement pattern is that the locations chosen were never in the immediate coastline, but always at a mile or more's distance from the sea and at a relatively safe altitude on the slopes of a hill. The reason was the millenary scourge of the entire region that were the pirates, as advantaged by the intricate geology of shores of southwestern Turkey and of the many islands and islets that are its natural extensions, in an environment not unlike that of the Caribbean Sea. Pirates remained a grave security problem well until the beginning of the 20th century and during the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the issue often necessitated foreign intervention.

Today the inhabitants of Datça region no longer make their living out of piracy but by growing and selling olives, almonds, honey and garden fruits and vegetables, catering particularly to tourism. The almonds of Datça are particularly prized in the region.

Apart from the traditional settlements, there are also a dozen recently constructed vacation villages in the peninsula. The balance between preserving the natural way of life and fauna and investing in large-scale infrastructures for the tourism industry is a vividly ongoing debate for Datça, as for the entire region of southwestern Turkey. The inhabitants of the Datça peninsula have shown themselves clearly opposed to gigantism and are in favor of developing the tourism potential of the region through family pensions and inns and small hotels well integrated into their environment, while Ankara approaches the debate in mere foreign exchange entry terms, as exemplified by a recent controversial statement by the Minister of Tourism, "Are we going to pickle the bays and coves?".

In Turkish literature, Datça is associated with the poet and the accomplished translator (notably of Shakespeare) Can Yücel who spent the last decades of his life in Datça and is also buried there. In a reference to the poet's extreme penchant for alcohol, it became a tradition among his fans to leave wine bottles on his tomb. Legend has it that in the morning the bottles are always empty.

See also

File:Datça2.jpg

Datça peninsula is traced by countless small bays and coves (52 in all)

+ Blue Cruise
+ Gulet
+ Foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey
+ Marinas in Turkey
+ Almond
+ Knidos
+ Caria
+ Can Yücel

External links

• Datça web site with free-to-use images