Datça is a district of
Muğla ProvinceMuğla is a province of Turkey, at the country's south-western corner, on the Aegean Sea. Its seat is Muğla, about 20 km inland, while some of Turkey's largest holiday resorts, such as Bodrum, Ölüdeniz, Marmaris and Fethiye, are on the coast in Muğla.-Etymology:The original name of Muğla is open...
in south-west
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
, and the center town of the district. The center is situated midway through the peninsula which carries the same name as the district and the town (
Datça PeninsulaThe Datça Peninsula is an 80 km-long, narrow peninsula in southwest Turkey separating the Gulf of Gökova to the north from the Gulf of Hisarönü to the south. The peninsula corresponds almost exactly to the administrative district of Datça, part of Muğla Province...
).
The long and narrow Datça Peninsula, whose outline follows the ondulations of small bays and coves facing south or north all along its length which reaches near , corresponds almost exactly to Datça district area, with the addition beyond its
isthmusAn isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas. Of note, the Isthmus of Panama connects the continents of North and South America , and the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt connects Africa and Asia .Canals are often built on isthmuses where they may be particularly advantageous to...
of a small panhandle in the direction of the south-east.
Datça is a district of
Muğla ProvinceMuğla is a province of Turkey, at the country's south-western corner, on the Aegean Sea. Its seat is Muğla, about 20 km inland, while some of Turkey's largest holiday resorts, such as Bodrum, Ölüdeniz, Marmaris and Fethiye, are on the coast in Muğla.-Etymology:The original name of Muğla is open...
in south-west
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
, and the center town of the district. The center is situated midway through the peninsula which carries the same name as the district and the town (
Datça PeninsulaThe Datça Peninsula is an 80 km-long, narrow peninsula in southwest Turkey separating the Gulf of Gökova to the north from the Gulf of Hisarönü to the south. The peninsula corresponds almost exactly to the administrative district of Datça, part of Muğla Province...
).
Geography
The long and narrow Datça Peninsula, whose outline follows the ondulations of small bays and coves facing south or north all along its length which reaches near , corresponds almost exactly to Datça district area, with the addition beyond its
isthmusAn isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas. Of note, the Isthmus of Panama connects the continents of North and South America , and the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt connects Africa and Asia .Canals are often built on isthmuses where they may be particularly advantageous to...
of a small panhandle in the direction of the south-east. The ithmus itself is wide only of several hundred meters.
The extreme end of the western tip of the district and the peninsula, the locality called Tekir, is the location of the ancient city of
KnidosKnidos or Cnidus was an ancient Greek city of Caria, part of the Dorian Hexapolis. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus or Gulf of Gökova. By the fourth century BCE, Knidos was located at the site of modern Tekir, opposite Triopion Island...
. There is an ongoing debate on whether or not this location was the original site of the ancient city, a number of sources claiming that until the mid-fourth century BCE, Knidos was halfway along the peninsula, near the present-day district center .
The peninsula's eastern end is marked by the
fjordGeologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:Fjords are formed when a glacier cuts a v-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Many such valleys were formed during the recent ice age...
-like indentation of Bencik Cove, 1.5 km in length, at the end of which the narrow isthmus where it joins the mainland is found. This point is a natural curiosity which offers a wide view of the
Gulf of GökovaThe Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme The Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme The Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme (Turkish: Kerme körfezi, Greek: Κεραμεικός κόλπος, Latin: Ceramicus Sinus, English: Ceramic Gulf or Gulf of Cos, is a long (100 km), narrow gulf of the Aegean Sea between Bodrum Peninsula...
in the north and the Gulf of Hisarönü in the south and is called
Balıkaşıran (literally,
the place where fish may leap across) and is also often used for the portage of small boats .
Settlement
Both the town and the peninsula were called
Reşadiye for a brief period in the beginning of the 20th century, in honor of the penultimate
OttomanThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
Sultan
Mehmed VMehmed V Reshad was the 35th Ottoman Sultan. He was the son of Sultan Abdülmecid I...
Reşad, and some maps may still refer to the peninsula under this name. 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. Reşadiye quarter was the original administrative core was located when the town was renamed Datça and turned into a district center in 1928, before it was moved to İskele quarter. The center town is crossed by the short course of the Datça Stream (
Datça Çayı in
TurkishTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
).
Datça has nine villages scattered along the the peninsula. These are; Cumalı, Emecik, Hızırşah, Karaköy, Kızlan,
MesudiyeMesudiye is a small village of Muğla Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. It is located in the Datça Peninsula where the Mediterranean embraces the Aegean Sea. The population of the village is about 700....
, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy. Historically, apart from small coastal patches, Datça Peninsula has two fertile areas along its length. The whole of the eastern half is bare, mountainous and scarcely habited. The western part is also mountainous, rising in places over 1,000 meters, but has towards its western end on the south side a considerable extent of well-watered land reaching to the coast at Palamutbükü locality and supporting a group of villages known collectively as
Betçe (
the five villages). These are;
MesudiyeMesudiye is a small village of Muğla Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. It is located in the Datça Peninsula where the Mediterranean embraces the Aegean Sea. The population of the village is about 700....
, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy, Cumalı. The village of
MesudiyeMesudiye is a small village of Muğla Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. It is located in the Datça Peninsula where the Mediterranean embraces the Aegean Sea. The population of the village is about 700....
, very near the sea shore has a jetty owned by the community of villagers. The village's bay is called Hayıtbükü. Palamutbükü locality, more to the west, also has a little pier which allows boats to moore. Palamutbükü today is a holiday village with a long beach.
The second and larger area of good land is in the middle of the peninsula southwest of the median isthmus dividing the two halves and centered around the town of Datça. The region's promising potential was noted already in the 1880s by the
hydrographerHydrography focuses on the measurement of physical characteristics of waters and marginal land. Hydrography generally refers to the measurement and description of any waters, and specifically refers to those measurements and descriptions of navigable waters necessary for safe navigation of vessels...
Thomas Abel B. Spratt in the following terms:
A point of note on the general settlement pattern of these villages is that the locations chosen were never in the immediate coastline, but always at a mile's distance or more from the sea and at a relatively safe altitude on the slopes of a hill. The reason was from times immemorial was the fear of pirates, advantaged as they were 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 SeaThe Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean situated in the tropics of the Western hemisphere, bounded to the south and west by the American landmass, with the North Atlantic Ocean proper to the northeast and the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest...
. Piracy remained a serious security problem well until the beginning of the 20th century and especially during the weakening of the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
and the issue often necessitated foreign intervention.
Tourism
Datça Peninsula is a prized location for tourists visiting
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
, 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 CruiseBlue Cruise a.k.a. Blue Voyage is a term used for recreational boating tours along the Turkish Riviera in Turkey's southwestern coasts, with connotations in tourism and literature. The term is used by Turkey's tourism industry...
along
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
's spectacular southwest coast. Boats (usually
guletA gulet is a traditional design of a two-masted wooden sailing vessel from the south-west coast of Turkey, although similar vessels can be found all around the eastern Mediterranean. Today this type of vessel, varying in size from 14 to 35 metres, is popular for tourist charters...
s) depart either from
BodrumBodrum , formerly Halicarnassus , is a Turkish port town in Muğla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region of the country. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of Gökova, and it faces the Greek island of Kos...
or
MarmarisMarmaris is a port city and a tourist destination on the Mediterranean coast, located in southwest Turkey, in the Muğla Province.Marmaris' main source of income is tourism...
, or from Datça itself for these tours.
The road from Marmaris to Datça may still be a little bumpy in some parts, and winds along a fauna that gradually but strikingly differs from that of the mainland.
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
faunaFauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g...
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 governments in the past displayed approaches to the debate in mere foreign exchange entry terms.
Notable natives
In
Turkish literatureTurkish literature is the collection of written and oral texts composed in the Turkish language, either in its Ottoman form or in less exclusively literary forms, such as that spoken in the Republic of Turkey today...
, Datça is associated with the poet and the accomplished translator (
notably of Shakespeare)
Can YücelCan Yücel was one of the most distinguished Turkish poets of the 20th century. He was noted for his use of plain and sincere language in his poems....
who spent the last decades of his life in Datça and is also buried here.
See also
- Mesudiye, Datça
Mesudiye is a small village of Muğla Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. It is located in the Datça Peninsula where the Mediterranean embraces the Aegean Sea. The population of the village is about 700....
- Datça Peninsula
The Datça Peninsula is an 80 km-long, narrow peninsula in southwest Turkey separating the Gulf of Gökova to the north from the Gulf of Hisarönü to the south. The peninsula corresponds almost exactly to the administrative district of Datça, part of Muğla Province...
- Gulf of Gökova
The Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme The Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme The Gulf of Gökova , Gulf of Kerme (Turkish: Kerme körfezi, Greek: Κεραμεικός κόλπος, Latin: Ceramicus Sinus, English: Ceramic Gulf or Gulf of Cos, is a long (100 km), narrow gulf of the Aegean Sea between Bodrum Peninsula...
- Foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey
Purchasing property in Turkey is becoming increasingly popular with holiday home owners and investors around the globe. Several factors are contributing to the popularity and the trend displayed by foreign purchases of property also had important repercussions within Turkey. The issue is especially...
- Blue Cruise
Blue Cruise a.k.a. Blue Voyage is a term used for recreational boating tours along the Turkish Riviera in Turkey's southwestern coasts, with connotations in tourism and literature. The term is used by Turkey's tourism industry...
- Marinas in Turkey
Marinas in Turkey refer to Turkey's ports of call for international and local yachtsmen equipped with modern services routinely expected in recreational boating industry, and they are presently found either in or near Istanbul or İzmir, the two largest port cities of the country, or in or near...
- Caria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...
External links