Kaş

The town stands on Antiphellus, which began as the port of the Lycian settlement of Phellos in the hills above and grew into the larger of the two. It joined the Lycian League, minted its own coins, and became the largest city of the district, known for the sponges of its coast; the Hellenistic theatre above the western shore and the rock-cut tombs in the cliff behind the modern houses date from those centuries, as does the free-standing Lycian sarcophagus that sits in one of the town's lanes. Christianity came early to this coast, and Antiphellus had a bishop.

Through the Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods the place was a small harbour of mixed population, known in Greek as Andifli. Its Greek Orthodox residents made their living from fishing, sponge diving and trade with the island of Kastellorizo, a few kilometres offshore, which was far the busier port in the 19th century. That community left in the compulsory exchange of populations agreed in 1923, and many of the houses in the old lanes are theirs.

For most of the 20th century Kaş was a remote fishing and farming town on a road that barely existed; the coastal highway from Fethiye to Antalya reached it only in the second half of the century. Tourism arrived later and more gently than at Bodrum or Marmaris, and the district's building rules have kept the town low-rise and largely free of the big resort hotels found elsewhere. Diving, launched here in part by the discovery of ancient wrecks offshore — among them the Bronze Age ship found at Uluburun in 1982 — sea kayaking and walking on the Lycian Way, which was waymarked in the 1990s, gave Kaş the outdoor reputation it has today.

Kaş attracts a different crowd from the package resorts further east: divers, walkers, sailors and independent travellers, along with many Turkish visitors from Istanbul and Ankara, some of whom have bought houses here. That mix has produced a town of small hotels, dive schools and owner-run restaurants rather than large chains, and a season that revolves around the water.

Beneath it the town remains a Turkish provincial centre with a farming hinterland. Villages in the mountains behind the coast grow almonds, olives and greenhouse vegetables, keep goats on the high pastures in summer in the Yörük tradition, and come down to the weekly market. Craft shops in the lanes sell kilims and jewellery, and the sarcophagus standing among the houses is treated as an ordinary part of the street rather than a monument.

Relations with Kastellorizo shape local identity: the island is visible from the harbour, a small ferry crosses in season, and families on both sides have long memories of the trade and the population exchange that separated them. Evening life is low-key by resort standards — a meze table, rakı, live Turkish music in a few bars, and the habit of walking the harbour after dark. Visitors are expected to dress and behave a little more quietly here than at the beach resorts, and the town takes some pride in that.

The town has only a few thousand residents, with several tens of thousands in the wider district that stretches along the coast and up into the mountains. The population multiplies in summer, when seasonal workers arrive from inland provinces and the hotels, boats and restaurants run every day, and shrinks sharply in winter, when many businesses close and the streets belong to the town again.

Tourism is the main employer, and an unusually specialised one: dive centres, kayak and boat operators, gulet crews, walking guides and small hotels. Around them the older economy continues — fishing from the harbour, greenhouse vegetables and citrus on the coastal flats, almonds and olives on the terraces, beekeeping in the pine forest, and goat and sheep herding on the mountain pastures.

The rhythm is set by boats leaving in the morning and returning in the late afternoon, by the weekly market, and by the long midsummer evenings when the lanes fill after the heat drops. Water supply, the strain of summer traffic on a single narrow road, building pressure on the peninsula and the coast, and the risk of fire and earthquake are the recurring local concerns, along with the question of how much more tourism a town of this size can absorb.

The food is Lycian coastal cooking: olive oil, lemon, herbs and whatever the sea and the gardens provide. Meze tables carry samphire dressed with lemon and olive oil, wild greens from the hillsides, broad beans, aubergine salads, stuffed vine leaves and yoghurt with garlic, eaten slowly with rakı, the aniseed spirit taken with water and ice. Fish — sea bass, bream, red mullet, calamari and octopus — is grilled plainly and served with rocket and lemon.

Meat dishes come from the hinterland. Tandır lamb, cooked slowly until it falls apart, and testi kebab, sealed in a clay pot and broken open at the table, appear on menus in the villages behind the town, and köfte, pide and lahmacun are the everyday standards. Gözleme, thin dough folded over cheese, potato or wild greens and cooked on a convex griddle, is made at market stalls and roadside places.

Local produce is the strength of the district: almonds, olives and olive oil pressed nearby, citrus and pomegranates from the coastal flats, carob, figs and grapes, and pine honey from the forest, a dark honey made from insect secretions rather than blossom and produced in quantity along this coast. Breakfast is the long Turkish spread of cheeses, olives, tomatoes, eggs, jams and honey with clotted kaymak; tea is drunk in small tulip glasses throughout the day, Turkish coffee after meals, and ayran, salted diluted yoghurt, with grilled meat.