Turkish Riviera: Introduction: Overview

Like the French Riviera, Turkey’s southwestern coast was “discovered” by artists and also transformed by them. In the 1920s, the dissident writer Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli was exiled from Istanbul to Bodrum, then a quaint fishing village à la early St.-Tropez. He fell in love with the Aegean scenery and, taking the nom de plume Fisherman of Halicarnassus (Bodrum’s name in antiquity), spent most of the rest of his life there. Other writers and painters followed suit, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s, exploring the unspoiled coastline aboard the local sailboats, called gulets. In 1957, noted Homer translator Azra Erhat, inspired by the sea’s impossible azures and indigos, published a book called Blue Voyage, and the term stuck. Today people refer to any recreational boating between Bodrum and Antalya, about 180 miles to the east, as a blue voyage, and numerous operators, local and international, offer these trips. Though many travelers charter yachts, a great way to see this magnificent region is still from aboard a gulet, a two-masted wooden vessel ranging from around forty to more than a hundred feet long.

For an insider’s report on Istanbul, click here.