As I swam ashore with the stern line at Gemiler Adasi near Fethiye, spellbound by the submerged ruins of a fourth century church clearly visible through the turquoise water beneath me, the incongruous beat of a 90s pop hit gradually increased to a shocking volume to shatter the narrow bay’s tranquillity. A towering, three-masted, pirate-themed gulet loomed into view on its track close to the row of yachts, parallel moored stern-to the sloping rocky coast scattered with olive trees and the remains of ancient buildings. Behind the huge skeleton figurehead glowering from the bow, revellers were jumping up and down, amassed on both decks, as the party ship cruised slowly past the island’s archaeological treasures, said to include the original tomb of Saint Nicholas. As the gulet dropped anchor at the end of the line, music still booming, most of the people relaxing in the cockpits of their sailing and motorboats looked on with bemusement and a certain amount of resignation. After all, nobody said that July in the heart of the Turkish Riviera cruising region would be quiet.
This fragile line between peace and cacophony, and the surreal intermingling of high-season tourist shenanigans with Turkey’s tangible ancient world, were to be constant themes of our cruise westward along the country’s southern and southwest coasts last summer. The much-lauded yachting region on the cusp of Europe and Asia lived up to its reputation for beauty and charm, with a proliferation of idyllic bays, enclosed lagoons and rugged coves, and a backdrop of soaring pine-forested mountains and white-painted hillside towns with gleaming golden mosque domes. We sailed into undeveloped areas settled for millennia, as Mediterranean sailors and traders would have done thousands of years before, and discovered an abundance of Hellenistic, Roman,
