Asirli Island

Asirli Adasi is a long, uninhabited rock off the Demre coast in Antalya Province, closing the eastern side of Gokkaya Bay in the Kekova region. It rises to 63 metres at its highest point, has no road, no jetty and no village, and is reached only by boat. What draws people to it is a single feature: the sea cave cut into its southern flank.

Where It Actually Is

One correction worth making before anything else. Asirli is nowhere near the meeting point of the Aegean and the Mediterranean; that boundary is conventionally drawn far to the west, off the Datca Peninsula. Asirli sits squarely on the Mediterranean coast, in the Demre district of Antalya Province, on the stretch of the Lycian shore between Kas and Kekova. Kalekoy, the village below the castle of ancient Simena, faces it across the water.

The Pirate Cave

Korsan Magarasi, the Pirate Cave, opens at sea level on the southern point of the island and is large enough to swim or paddle into. Gulets and day boats cannot go inside; the usual practice is to anchor outside and enter by tender, kayak or on a swim from the boat. There is no entrance fee, no guide and no lighting. Inside it is dark, cool and full of bats, and the ceiling drips.

The name comes from the tradition that pirates sheltered here, and the coast lends itself to the story: this shoreline is broken into hundreds of coves and islets, precisely the kind of ground raiders favoured. It is worth being clear, though, that the pirate association is local tradition rather than documented history. No excavation or ancient text ties this particular cave to a pirate base. Descriptions of the interior as a rainbow-coloured or iridescent grotto do not match what is actually there either; this is a plain, dark limestone sea cave, and the appeal is the scale of the entrance and the light on the water at its mouth.

The Caves Are Habitat

The island falls inside the Kas-Kekova Special Environmental Protection Area, which covers 258.3 square kilometres, 92 of them marine, and holds around a thousand recorded marine species. Sea caves along this coast are resting and pupping habitat for the Mediterranean monk seal, one of the rarest marine mammals in the world: somewhere between 450 and 600 mature animals survive in total, and as many as 140 of those live along the Turkish coast. Monitoring in the region has recorded adults and pups sharing single caves.

That is a practical constraint, not a footnote. Engine noise, torches and crowds inside a cave will push a seal off a site it may have used for years. If you go in, go in quietly, without lights, and leave if there is anything on the ledges.

Anchoring in Gokkaya Bay

Asirli shelters Gokkaya Limani, the large bay behind it, which is one of the better overnight stops on this coast. The bay has three entrances, a scatter of rocky islets in the middle and Lycian remains on its northern shore, and it stays flat in most conditions because the island and the mainland close it on either side. This combination of protected water and an unroaded shoreline is why it is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet cruise in Turkey, and why boats that could push on to Kas often stop here instead.

The island itself is rocky right to the waterline, with no beach to land on, and the rocks carry patches of slippery algae. Sea shoes are worth having if you plan to get out of the water anywhere other than the boat's ladder.

Season and Water

Swimming here is comfortable from late May, and the sea off this coast peaks at roughly 28C to 29C (82F to 84F) in July and August, staying warm well into October. July and August are also when the day-boat traffic from Demre and Kas is heaviest at the cave, so early morning or late afternoon gives a very different experience of the same place.

What Else Is Within Reach

• Kekova island and the sunken city: the ancient settlement on Kekova's north shore slid partly below the waterline after earthquakes in the 2nd century AD. Staircases and house walls run straight into the sea; swimming and diving over the ruins are prohibited.
• Kalekoy (Simena): a village of a few dozen houses under a medieval castle, with Lycian sarcophagi standing in the shallows and a small theatre cut into the rock inside the castle walls.
• Myra and the Church of St Nicholas, Demre: Nicholas was bishop of Myra in the 4th century, and the church at Demre stands over the site associated with his burial, though the building you walk through is a later Byzantine one, much rebuilt. His remains were taken to Bari in southern Italy in 1087. The Santa Claus figure grew out of legends attached to him over the following centuries rather than out of anything recorded about his life. Myra itself, just inland, keeps a well-preserved Roman theatre and a cliff face of Lycian rock-cut tombs.
• Istlada: a small Lycian site above the coast east of Kalekoy, with rock tombs and Roman-period remains, reached on foot from the shore.