Datça: Guide, Hotels, Map & Photos
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EUR 70 - 150 Marphe Hotel
 Marphe Hotel offers spacious, Mediterranean-style accommodation that is spread around beautifully landscaped grounds. It is located 5 minutes´ d… MoreEUR 120 - 220 Mehmet Ali Aga Mansion
 Combining historic charm with modern luxuries, this beautiful 19th-century mansion offers personalised service and a host of cultural activities in a … MoreEUR 75 - 100 Hotel Villa Tokur
 The outdoor pool of this rustic boutique hotel in Datça is bordered by a stone deck, lush trees and antique terracotta vases. It offers panoramic vie… MoreEUR 60 - 90 Hotel Mavi Beyaz
 Situated in Palamut Bükü, Otel Mavi Beyaz offers rustic accommodation. Free Wi-Fi and parking is available. It features an on-site restaurant, a bar… MoreEUR 28 - 88 Fora Apart Hotel
 Fora Apart Hotel is located in the heart of Datca, just 100 metres from the Aegean Sea. It features free Wi-Fi and rooms with a private balcony.
All … MoreEUR 70 - 125 Han Royal Hotels
 Set in a building with a fortress-like façade on the Datca Peninsula, Han Royal Hotels features rooms with a wooden balcony offering panoramic views … MoreEUR 90 - 110 Datca Villa Asina
 Standing on a cliff and overlooking the Greek islands of Simi and Rhodos, this charming hotel offers comfortable rooms and personal service as well as… More | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Datça: Guide
Datça is a district, as well as the center town of that district, in Muğla Province of Turkey. It is situated midway through the Datça Peninsula, almost 100 km in length, following the ondulations of small bays and coves all along, and practically an island since it is connected to the mainland through an isthmus of only several hundred meters in width. At the very tip of the peninsula is the antique city of Knidos (at the locality called Tekir today).
Both the town and the peninsula were called Reşadiye till recently, in honor of the penultimate Ottoman Empire|Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V Reşad. Today, Reşadiye is the name of one of the quarters of the town along with Eski Datça (literally "Old Datça") and İskele ("the quay") quarters, each separated from the others by a distance of about a mile to form, taken as a whole, the town of Datça proper.
Tourists, oracles, pirates, lepers, almonds, honey and poets
Datça Peninsula is a prized location for tourists visiting Turkey, especially by sea, because of the beauty of its many coves and larger bays, which are favored ports of call for those undertaking the celebrated Blue Cruise along Turkey's spectacular southwest coast. Boats (usually gulets) depart either from Bodrum or Marmaris, or from Datça itself for these tours.
The road from Marmaris to Datça is still a little bumpy, and winds along a fauna that gradually but strikingly changes from that of the mainland. The narrow isthmus after which the Datça peninsula starts is called Balıkaşıran (literally, where the fish could skip), in reference to the extremely short distance from one sea on the one side to the other sea on the other side. According to Herodotus, during the Persian Empire|Persian invasions in 540 B.C., the Knidos|Knidians had sought to dig a canal at this spot as a defensive measure and in order to transform their territory into an island. But an oracle was consulted who reportedly said "If the gods had so willed, they would have made your land an island. Do not pierce the isthmus." Whereupon they surrendered to the Persians.
In Mesudiye, Datça|Mesudiye, a small village by the coast, there is a jetty owned by a young man named Ogün and, although the official name of the bay is Hayıtbükü, the place came to be known as "Ogün'ün yeri" (Ogün's Place) among yachtsmen. With the very high number of the bays and coves ornamenting Turkey's southwestern coastal straits, it is not uncommon for one of these to be spontaneously named after a certain person who could have had a connection to the locality of a temporary or a permanent sort. These names often evolve without the direct involvement of the person concerned. For example, the former "Bencik cove" before arriving in Datça is now widely known as "Emel Sayın cove" (Emel Sayın koyu) simply because she had found the place beautiful and had stopped there to give a short concert to those present. Similarly, "Bardakçı cove" in Bodrum is also called "Zeki Müren cove" (Zeki Müren koyu).
Further away in the direction of Knidos, there is another village called Palamutbükü where a little pier allows boats to moore. Palamutbükü is a holiday village with a long beach. In former times, wine production was the main activity in this area.
Datça has nine villages scattered along the outline of the penisula. These are; Cumalı, Emecik, Hızırşah, Karaköy, Kızlan, Mesudiye, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy. Among these the village of Emecik is of interest for being founded by lepers|leprous outcasts of the society abandoned in these coasts by a Spain|Spanish galleon in the 17th century, who reportedly later recovered from their affection and founded the village. The physionomy of the inhabitants of this village is different than those of the other villages. Another point of note on the settlement pattern is that the locations chosen were never in the immediate coastline, but always at a mile or more's distance from the sea and at a relatively safe altitude on the slopes of a hill. The reason was the millenary scourge of the entire region that were the pirates, as advantaged by the intricate geology of shores of southwestern Turkey and of the many islands and islets that are its natural extensions, in an environment not unlike that of the Caribbean Sea. Pirates remained a grave security problem well until the beginning of the 20th century and during the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the issue often necessitated foreign intervention.
Today the inhabitants of Datça region no longer make their living out of piracy but by growing and selling olives, almonds, honey and garden fruits and vegetables, catering particularly to tourism. The almonds of Datça are particularly prized in the region.
Apart from the traditional settlements, there are also a dozen recently constructed vacation villages in the peninsula. The balance between preserving the natural way of life and fauna and investing in large-scale infrastructures for the tourism industry is a vividly ongoing debate for Datça, as for the entire region of southwestern Turkey. The inhabitants of the Datça peninsula have shown themselves clearly opposed to gigantism and are in favor of developping the tourism potential of the region through family pensions and inns and small hotels well integrated into their environment, while Ankara approaches the debate in mere foreign exchange entry terms, as exemplified by a recent controversial statement by the Minister of Tourism, "Are we going to pickle the bays and coves?".
In Turkish literature, Datça is associated with the poet and the accomplished translator (notably of Shakespeare) Can Yücel who spent the last decades of his life in Datça and is also buried there. In a reference to the poet's extreme penchant for alcohol, it became a tradition among his fans to leave wine bottles on his tomb. Legend has it that in the morning the bottles are always empty.
See also
+ Blue Cruise
+ Gulet
+ Foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey
+ Marinas in Turkey
+ Almond
+ Knidos
+ Caria
+ Can Yücel
External links
Footnotes
This "Travel Guide" section is drawn from the Wikipedia article "Datça". We hope you will edit and improve it. It is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.