Ghost village
Trip Start
May 09, 2010
1
15
39
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Macri Hotel, Kayakoy
Kayakoy, Turkish Aegean Coast, Turkey
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Kayakoy is located on the outskirts of a deserted medieval Greek Village once called Levissi which in its day was home to over 7000 people. Today the remaining 2000 houses have been deserted and they are a reminder of a very sad episode in Turkish history where the people of this village were forced to leave their homeland and flee to a country that was completely unknown to them. At the end of the Greek Turkish war of independence 1919-1922 both Greece and Turkey enforced the migration of all ethnic Greek Christians from Turkey and all ethnic Turk Muslims from Greece. It was the largest ever population swap with over a million people involved on both sides. Most Ottoman Greeks had never spoken true Greek in their life and were spurned on their arrival in Greece. On the other hand the Greek Muslims who were settled here from Macedonia found the agriculture and way of life unsustainable and left. Thus Levissi became a ghost town. It is a very eery place and another extraordinary part of Turkey.
Tomorrow we go on our 6km mountain treck - a part of the trip I have had mixed feelings about but I have managed to keep up pretty well with all the walking so far (and there has been a lot) so I think I will go. I have my good sneakers with me so everything should be fine.
Comments
I am very glad to here that you enjoyed your trip to our village, however you must take with a pinch of salt what your tour guide told you or what you read in your book.
There were about 500 houses at the time of the population swap, giving, I estimate, a population between 2,000 and 2,500. Most of those houses survive and of course you can count the number on Google Earth. The number was also recorded by Otto Benndorf in 1884. He was The Professor of Archeology at Vienna University at that time.