Guide
Lake Bafa is a shallow freshwater lake set into the Menteşe mountains at the south-eastern edge of the delta of the Büyük Menderes. It covers about sixty square kilometres, stands two metres above sea level, reaches twenty-one metres at its deepest, and runs sixteen kilometres along its long axis and six at its widest. It lies across the provinces of Aydın and Muğla.
In antiquity the lake was part of the Aegean. Alluvium carried down by the Büyük Menderes left it kilometres inland, and today it is some seventeen kilometres from the point where that river reaches the sea.
The Büyük Menderes once emptied into the gulf of Latmos, and the ancient city of Herakleia, whose ruins stand on the lake shore today, lay on the eastern side of that gulf. As the river's alluvium built up, the gulf became first a salt lake. When the water gathering behind the natural barrier rose, it spread north over the shallow Çerçen bay and grew larger, and by draining its surplus through an outlet at its western end into the Büyük Menderes it turned slowly into a freshwater lake.
The shores are as indented as those of the Aegean itself, which is much of the beauty of the place. A number of small islands lie in the lake, some of them holding the remains of old buildings; the main ones are Hayaletada, İkizada and Menet Adası. On the shore stand the ruins of the ancient harbour cities of Herakleia and Pyrrha, and monasteries and old caves are found in the country around.
Well-kept olive groves grow along the shore, thickening in places and mingling with maquis on the mountain slopes. The northern part of the lake is markedly mountainous and the maquis there is denser.
The Söke–Milas road follows the southern shore, where there are tourist facilities and camping grounds. The main settlements around the lake are Kapkırı to the east and Serçin to the west.
This is one of the important places for birds in Türkiye. The western shore, looking out over the Balat plain, is shallow ground where migrating birds stop and breed in autumn and spring. A fishing cooperative works on the lake, and until recently the fish and crayfish caught here were exported.
Lake Bafa was declared a nature conservation area in 1994. Even so, the reduction and pollution of the river water reaching it changed the chemistry of the lake and cut the oxygen in it, killing hundreds of thousands of fish and dragging the ecosystem into a decline that cannot be reversed.
- Designated
- 8.07.1994
Entry fee
- Aegean group 1 · category 1 · Per person
- 85 ₺
- Aegean group 2 · category 1 · Per person
- 75 ₺
