Sican Island

Sican Adasi is a triangular block of rock lying under a kilometre off the coast road between Konyaalti and Beldibi, west of Antalya. It covers roughly four hectares, runs about 300 metres north to south, and stands 15 to 20 metres above the water at its highest point. The Turkish name means Rat Island and comes from the outline: seen from the shore, the rock reads as an animal facing north.

Nothing lives on it but birds. It carries the densest seagull colony on this stretch of the Antalya coast, and the noise reaches you well before the rock does.

The Names It Has Carried

The oldest recorded name is Lyrnateia, which appears in the coastal survey attributed to Skylax and most likely comes from Lyrnas, a settlement on the facing shore near Beldibi. Under Rome the island was Attelebusa, locust island. Medieval Italian sailing directions give it as Renathia and Aratia. Piri Reis, charting this coast in the sixteenth century, entered it as Guvercin Adasi, Pigeon Island. Eighteenth and nineteenth century sources call it Resat Adasi. Sican Adasi is the modern name and the one that stuck, though it is disliked enough locally that proposals to replace it surface every few years.

The Tower and the Wall

The long wall on the western side, visible from the Kemer road, is the island's most conspicuous structure, and most of what is said about it is wrong. It is not pirate work, and it has nothing to do with Sultan Mehmed Resad. The Antalya cultural inventory records it as an Eastern Roman defensive wall on the shore-facing side, still in use under the Ottomans, with a watchtower of Hellenistic date above it. The name Resat Adasi is attested in eighteenth and nineteenth century sources, which puts it well before Mehmed V came to the throne in 1909, so the sultan cannot be its origin.

A Hellenistic lookout and a later wall suit the island's position. It sits directly on the approach to the bay of Antalya, which made a watch post here useful to whoever held the coast, and raiding troubled these waters for a long time.

Diving

The two sides of the island make different dives. The western side, facing the shore, is shallow: around 8 metres over a sandy bottom. The northeastern side drops to 22 metres over rock. All four sides are diveable, with depths running from about 5 to 22 metres, which is why the island is used as a training site as often as anything else. The feature most divers come for is the small sea cave on the eastern side, on the steeper flank of the rock.

Jet skis and water skis operate along the same stretch of shore, off Konyaalti and Beldibi rather than at the island itself.

Getting There and Going Ashore

Boat trips run out from Kaleici, Antalya's old harbour, and from Beldibi; private craft cross in minutes. Lying that close to a city beach and sitting directly on the run between Antalya and Kemer makes the island a classic stop on a Turkey blue cruise itinerary that starts from this end of the coast rather than the usual Bodrum or Fethiye ports.

Going ashore takes some preparation. The island is bare rock, thorn and scrub with no water and no shade, so long trousers and a full bottle are worth having if you plan to climb to the tower. The gulls are territorial while nesting, which is the real reason to think about where you walk.