We published a story about a town in Turkey called Kayaköy—
known as Levissi in Greek, that was abandoned by its complete Greek
population in 1922-23 when all Greeks were forced to flee Turkey during
the exchange of populations with Turkey. It’s one of the world’s
spookiest “ghost towns”— abandoned almost a century ago by people
fleeing for their lives, leaving behind their possessions, their homes—
their livelihoods.
The
site is an eerily compelling and moving reminder of the sad aftermath
of the First World War and subsequent Greco-Turkish War, which resulted
in the massacres of tens of thousands of Greek Christians who had lived
in what is now modern Turkey for centuries. Like millions of others, the
Greeks of Kayakoy were part of the population exchange of 1923 and were
forced to relocate to mainland Greece.
Meanwhile, the Muslim farmers exiled from Greece at the same time
found the land in Kayakoy inhospitable and soon left for other areas of
Turkey, leaving the hillside village abandoned for a second time. In
1957, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake delivered Kayakoy its final coup de
grâce, destroying most of the town’s buildings. Homes and businesses
around the valley floor were later restored or rebuilt, but the hillside
homes and buildings have been left untouched.
Today, the hillside of Kayakoy remains deserted, never having
recovered – either culturally or economically – from the mass exodus in
1923. The homes, schools, shops, cafés, chapels and churches have been
left to crumble, unprotected from looters or the elements.
Louis de Bernieres, the British novelist most famous for his novel,
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, has voiced cautious reservations about the
Turkish government’s plans. His second novel, Birds Without Wings, took inspiration from the village
(Eskibahçe, the fictional setting for the novel, was based on Kayaköy).
He said the development “could either be a wonderful rebirth, or a
terrible act of vandalism, depending on how sensitively it is done.
“The town cannot take motor traffic, as the streets are too narrow,
and putting in infrastructure might cause damage,” he added. “The
restorations should be as authentic as possible, so that the former way
of life is evident.”
Birds
Without Wings (published in 2004) is set in Turkey, and portrays the
people in a small village toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rise
of Kemal Atatürk, and the outbreak of the First World War. <–Click the link to get the book.
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