Türkiye's historic villages are places where an older way of building has outlasted the people, or the times, that made it. The best known are Cumalıkızık, an early Ottoman village on the slopes of Uludağ outside Bursa; Şirince, a former Rum hill village above Selçuk; Kayaköy near Fethiye, a whole town left empty; the five Greek villages of Gökçeada; Yörük Köyü, a Turkmen village near Safranbolu; and Vakıflı in Hatay, whose people, the Culture Portal says, are all Armenian, the one such village in the country. Several are urban conservation areas, and UNESCO has inscribed Cumalıkızık together with Bursa. Below they are grouped by region with what to look for in each; directions for each are in the village's own guide here.
Cumalıkızık, below Uludağ
Cumalıkızık is one of five Kızık villages still standing on the lower slopes of Uludağ and it is the one that kept its fabric whole. Its status as a vakıf village, set up as a pious foundation, is part of the reason, and the occupation of 1920–22 that harmed the villages near it left this one untouched. The result is a rare survival of early Ottoman rural housing: three-storey houses of rubble stone, timber and mudbrick in yellow, white, blue and purple close over cobbled lanes too narrow for pavements. Of the two undocumented stories behind the name, one says the other Kızık villages gathered here for Friday prayers, cuma being Friday. Look out too for a ruined Byzantine church and the ethnography museum on the square, opened in 2014. A raspberry festival is held in June. From central Bursa it is eleven kilometres, by metro and then a short minibus ride.
Two emptied Greek towns: Şirince and Kayaköy
Şirince stands on a hill eight kilometres east of Selçuk, and until 1922 its people were Orthodox Rum. About two hundred houses from those years are left, stepped in rows along the slope, and among its old buildings are two churches of the nineteenth century, Aya Yani and Aya Dimitri. When most of the Rum villagers left, settlers who came in the exchange of 1924 brought it back to life. Today the village is a place for fruit wine and for stalls of what villagers make themselves, from soap and olive oil to pekmez, honey and jam. Rooms in old Rum houses let you stay on and add Kayserkaya and the Nesin Matematik Köyü.
Kayaköy, eight kilometres south of Fethiye, looks far older than it is. The ministry insists the stone houses that cover its slope belong to the late Ottoman period, built by Greek settlers; after they were exchanged for Turks from western Thrace in the first years of the republic, the town was left to the weather and its timber rotted. What rewards a slow walk is the planning: houses of fifty square metres at most, cellars underneath, cisterns at the doorways fed from the roofs, and each house sited to keep its neighbours' light and outlook. Chapels, two big churches, a school and a customs house stand among them.
By sea: Gökçeada and Simena
On Gökçeada, reached by ferry from Kabatepe in Eceabat, five Greek villages are protected together, and they differ enough to see more than one. Zeytinli, three kilometres from the town among olives, is the place for the island's pounded coffee and has its oldest church, Agios Georgios. Eski Bademli keeps a church of the Virgin, a laundry house and its old school. Kaleköy, named for the Byzantine castle remains above it, is the busiest in summer and has the churches of Agios Nikolaos and Agia Marina. Tepeköy sits highest on the island, and Dereköy, sixteen kilometres out, is the largest, though most of its houses are now empty; go there for the historic laundry house where the village women washed together.
On the Lycian coast between Kaş and Demre, Simena, today a second village called Kaleköy, faces Kekova island; it is among the few villages in Türkiye you arrive at by boat. Ancient earthquakes sank part of it, so along the shore steps run down into the water beside Lycian sarcophagi and a breakwater. A steep path goes up between today's houses and old tombs to the medieval castle, where a theatre with seven rows of seats is cut into the rock.
Central Anatolia: Yörük Köyü and Çiğdemli Tuğut
Yörük Köyü is often likened to a miniature Safranbolu, the town six kilometres away, and it has been an urban conservation area since 1997 as a genuine Turkmen village. The plan is what sets it apart: level ground was plentiful, so rather than the loose clusters found in most Anatolian villages, the houses line the main street almost wall to wall, like a terrace. The Sipahioğlu house is open to visitors, and its painted rooms, with friezes and cartouches in C and S scrolls, are dated 1877, or 1294 by the Hijri reckoning.
Çiğdemli Tuğut, twenty kilometres from Divriği in Sivas province, is an entire village declared an urban conservation area, with its buildings registered as cultural property. Evliya Çelebi stayed at its han on the road from Sivas to Diyarbakır and recorded a thriving place of 150 households amid vineyards and gardens. Its worth lies in having carried Divriği's tradition of house building down to the present across a large village, something few places still do.
Hatay: the Armenian village of Vakıflı
Vakıflı, three kilometres from Samandağ, is a living village, and according to its museum no other Armenian village in the country has held on to its language, customs and common life. The villagers built the museum themselves with help from the development agency DOĞAKA and name it after Musadağ, because it takes in the other villages on that mountain as well. Its core is an archive of family diaries and photograph collections from those villages on microfilm, alongside panels on needle lace, stonework and silkworms. The day to come is the second Sunday of August, when the Virgin Mary's feast day draws people of several faiths.
Getting there
These villages are far apart, so each is easiest to pair with a nearby base: Cumalıkızık with Bursa, Şirince with Selçuk and Ephesus, Kayaköy with Fethiye, Yörük Köyü with Safranbolu, Çiğdemli Tuğut with Divriği, and Simena with a boat trip around Kekova. Gökçeada needs the ferry from Kabatepe, and Vakıflı is best timed for its August feast. Each village guide on this site gives the way there and, where the place has them, visiting details.
