The Turquoise Coast of Turkey is home to rugged reefs, wrecks and ancient underwater treasures. In his journey along this fabled riviera, Farhat Jah visits the delightful town of Kaş.
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It was blisteringly hot, even for a Turkish summer. I had thought Istanbul was hot, but Dalaman Airport was just blistering when the plane landed. The Turkish Airbus’s captain informed passengers that it was 46°C. The domestic terminal had no aerobridges, so the sun beat down on our heads as we walked across the tarmac.
Getting there
My wife, Francisca, and I collected a hire car and drove through the Taurus Mountains. When travelling in Turkey, we rarely make reservations, and so we decided to stop in the village of Üzümlü. We found a hotel made of pine and stone. We left our dive gear in the car and, after showering, wandered around the town. The cobbled streets, old houses and small cafés were charming.
Apart from a small group of English people engrossed in conversation, we could have been in any old Anatolian village. We found a pleasant enough restaurant, ate dinner, went back to the hotel and fell asleep.
After a good night’s rest, Francisca, our travel companions Le’reyce Josephs and Paul Bailey, and I looked for somewhere to eat. We found the local council café, which had good fare for relatively few liras. After breakfast, we descended through the mountains to the inexplicably beautiful coastal road. The road was cut into the side of the rock, like it was on an endless ledge. It wound its way between dry headlands and through small tunnels, rising above larger bays of azure waters. Eventually, we climbed a final hill and descended a steep slope into the town of Kaş.
This abundance of rock meant that Kaş was not an average tourist destination. Indeed, there were only two small, narrow beaches that flanked the town. Kaş was a small harbour surrounded by an old village. Facing Kaş was the island of Meis, also known as Kastellorizo (in Greek).
The operator
We stopped at Kaş Diving and dropped off our dive kit. The dive centre was run by an excellent team, who knew exactly what they were doing. Kaş Diving was a TDI technical diving centre, which also offered recreational diving and courses. It was obvious that Germans made up a lot of their clientele, as most of the dive guides were fluent in German. We wandered off in search of more food.
The next morning, we reported to the dive vessel, which was, in effect, the dive centre. The owner and chief instructor was Levent Aydoğmuş. Levent was involved in giving a side-mount instruction course, and all his other dive guides were taking divers, so he took one look at us and made a decision.
“If you four can follow me,” he said, “you can do your own dive”.
His staff then gave us a thorough 3D briefing, using towels to replicate reefs and plastic figurines for divers and shipwrecks.
Diving
The Canyon. Our first dive was The Canyon and the wreck of MV Dimitri. I had been diving in the Turkish Mediterranean since 1992, yet I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. Some of Turkey’s dive sites can be devoid of life, while others are positively boiling with fish.
We jumped into shallow waters with a sandy bottom and swam over a rocky ridge at three metres. On the seaward side of the ridge, it was a near-vertical wall. We swam over it before entering a narrow tunnel and dropping vertically to 30m. The canyon went deeper, but we popped out at 30m and turned left along the wall. After a short while, we came across the promised wreck of MV Dimitri.
We came alongside the wreck and descended slightly. I swung around the stern at 36m. Levent gave me a funny look, and I gave him the OK sign. I had enough air and bottom time as we were using NITROX 30. I continued taking a few photographs with Francisca, and as I turned to look out into the blue, a large school of small barracuda appeared and swam lazily by.
We then started our ascent, and I ran lower on air than I was comfortable with. So, I signalled to Levent that I was going to shallow up, do a safety stop and get back on the dive boat.
Francisca developed an ear problem on the second day of our dive trip, so she joined the boat and snorkelled instead.
Wrecks
Kaş is somewhat unique in Turkish terms for having a real wreck just off the coast. The Dimitri ran aground on top of a reef in 1960. It could not be salvaged and was declared a navigational hazard. Subsequently, the Turkish Navy blew the wreck off the reef using explosives. The bow ended up in the shallows, and the rest of the vessel slid down the slope and opened up like a sardine can. It lies at a depth of 15 to 45m. Seeing the ribs of the vessel splayed out made for an interesting dive site.
Many Turkish towns have been gifted a 1960s-era Turkish naval patrol boat. In 1982, these vessels were transferred to the Turkish Coast Guard in order to avoid conflict with a European treaty on conventional forces. The Turks wanted to keep the size of their army and needed to hive off 35 percent of their armed forces. The obvious answer was to create a coast guard and put the personnel and small vessels into this non-military force. In the last 20 years, as these vessels were retired, the Turkish coast guard gifted them to the diving communities of Kaş. They are generally all set in 25m of water, making for an interesting recreational dive or a nice little technical training bag.
Kaş also had a DC-3 Dakota wreck, which was upright and in good condition, with the wheels down. We boarded the Dakota by swimming in the rear door and ascended to the cockpit. We took a few photos and swam back, taking care not to stir up the fine sand on the bottom.
Divers and caverns
Throughout the trip, we were diving with primarily German divers, who were charming and highly professional. Levent continued to allow us to dive as a four-buddy team until Francisca moved to snorkelling. In the rare times that we needed guidance, a Turkish dive guide would point us in the direction of the relevant hole in the rock, and we would dutifully drop into it.
We found ourselves in a cavern, similar to a collapsed cenote in Mexico. We swam down, using our torches to play on the side of the cavern. A school of silvery fish flew past us, disturbed by our arrival. We dropped to around 30m and exited through a large opening onto a sandy bottom. All of this was in clear, 50m visibility.
We had been down for some time, and, not wishing to have to do stupid amounts of decompression stops, we ascended just as the Germans were exiting the cavern. Levent really had his group timings well organised.
Diving on the edge of Greece
Some of our dives took place on the last stretch of reefs in Turkey, before they reached the Greek island of Kastellorizo. This meant that we were diving a few hundred metres from the island. I scanned the coast with my binoculars and saw the abandoned mosque, and, very clearly, the Turkish village that had been inherited by Greeks.
An Australian next to me said that he lived on the island of Kastellorizo and commuted over to Kaş twice a week to go diving. I asked him why he did not dive in Greece.
“Oh, it’s banned for security reasons. I know, it’s ridiculous.”
Happily, the relations between Kastellorizo and Turkey are much better now. Ferries plied back and forth, full of Greek and Turkish tourists, and cargo vessels supplied the Greek island with all its fresh fruit and vegetables.
Seahorses and seagrass
Our next dives were in the shallows, on a sandy bottom, in search of seahorses. “Well, this does not sound like the most interesting of dives,” Bailey said to me. But, as we descended, we snooped around the sand and rock and found a plethora of life. The seagrass and the rock walls were absolutely fascinating. We wandered slowly along the wall and looked under every rock, marvelling at the fish life.
Long ago, Kenan Dogan, the legendary commercial diver and instructor of Bodrum, told me that the seagrass was the most important source for the regeneration of marine life. “As important as any coral reef,” he had said, “the seagrass is where life begins. When we sink a wreck, we always choose sand with no life, no seagrass.”
Kenan was not wrong. In my childhood, fishermen would catch enormous fish throughout Turkey. Overfishing had destroyed the marine stocks and large parts of the fishing industry. However, a few marine protected areas and a slowdown in destructive fishing methods have seen a slight resurgence in marine life. This was particularly true in Kaş, as it had been in Bodrum. This was one of the most vibrant dive locations I had seen in Turkey.
Amphoras
On the second-to-last day of our trip, Levent allowed us to drop down to his favourite dive site, the amphora field, which he said was around 40m.
For this type of dive, I asked for a stage cylinder, which was duly provided. Le’Reyce, Bailey and I jumped in and dropped to around 20m. I had started the morning off with a very upset stomach, so I asked my buddies to be kind if I did not manage to make it to the end of the dive. They both obliged.
Luckily, my stomach held out. Indeed, the nitrox and being under pressure made me feel absolutely brilliant. We wandered down a rocky slope that reminded me of a small mountain. We started seeing the historic clay pots at around 32m, but the largest and best started at 40m. In fact, the trail of large pots went deeper and deeper. I did exactly as I had been instructed and did not go below our target depth.
Just as we started our ascent, I was stung in the face by some kind of marine creature. Cursing and swearing underwater, I made my way slowly back up towards the dive boat. Bailey was rather amused by the whole affair. But even the pain could not take away the quality of the dive.
The people
At first glance, Turkey might appear a homogeneous nation-state. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is home to a rich blend of cultures, including Turks, Kurds, Laz, Arabs, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, Armenians and subgroups of all the above. Alongside its citizens, small expatriate communities live, particularly Europeans, in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. Tourism draws visitors from Asia, Europe and Africa, all eager to experience a land that bridges continents and histories.
Predominantly Muslim, Turkey’s Islamic culture today is most evident in its generosity. Hospitality is deeply ingrained, and visitors are warmly received wherever they go. In Turkey, everybody is truly welcome. Beneath this warmth lies a nation layered with history, from the ruins of Troy and Ephesus to the great Byzantine and Ottoman legacies, which still echo through its mosques and marketplaces.
Turkish geography
Turkey is a land of plateaus, coastline, mountains and more mountains. The Kaçkar Dağları rise from the old Soviet border; the Taurus Mountains (Toros Dağları) run from the Aegean to the eastern Mediterranean; and the Eastern Anatolian Mountains (Doğu Anadolu Dağları) mark the frontiers with Iran and Iraq. Between them lies the semi-arid Anatolian plateau, around 3,000ft high (~914m), encircled by over 3,100 miles (~4989km) of coastline—a stunning sweep of cliffs, beaches and tranquil coves that make Turkey endlessly captivating.
Our week in Kaş came to an end with a final dive at The Canyon. We wandered lazily around the walls before ascending. We climbed out, washed our dive kit and steamed back into port. We all had a final goodbye dinner with our newfound German friends before making the two-day drive through the mountains back to Dalaman Airport. ■
REFERENCE: Wikimedia
