About Fethiye

Fethiye is a coastal town in Muğla Province on Turkey's Turquoise Coast, built around a deep, sheltered natural harbour where the Lycian and Carian regions once met. The 2022 census recorded 177,702 residents across the wider district. Long known by other names through its ancient and Ottoman past, the town took its current name only in the 20th century, in honour of one of Turkey's earliest military aviators.

Ancient Telmessos

In antiquity the site was home to Telmessos, the largest city of Lycia, renowned across the ancient world for its school of augurs and seers — according to the historian Herodotus, the Lydian king Croesus consulted Telmessian oracle-priests before going to war with the Persian king Cyrus. The city was absorbed into the Persian Empire following the Anatolian campaign of the general Harpagus around 547 BC, later joined the Athenian-led Delian League, and in 334-333 BC fell to Alexander the Great's forces, who reportedly seized its acropolis using soldiers disguised as travelling musicians. Telmessos's rock-cut tombs still overlook the modern town, among them the Ionic-columned Tomb of Amyntas, dated to around 350 BC and reached by a long stone staircase, along with a Roman theatre built into the hillside.

From Meğri to Fethiye

Byzantine rulers briefly renamed the city Anastasiopolis after the emperor Anastasios in the 8th century, though the name did not stick, and by the 9th century it was known as Makri. The town passed to Ottoman rule in 1424 as "Meğri," a name that endured until 1934, when it was renamed Fethiye in memory of Captain Fethi Bey, one of the Ottoman Empire's first military pilots, who died in 1914 during a pioneering long-distance flight toward Cairo when his aircraft crashed near Damascus. A severe earthquake struck the town in 1957, destroying the great majority of its buildings and giving Fethiye the largely mid-century townscape it has today.

Kayaköy and the Population Exchange

A few kilometres from the town centre lies Kayaköy, a hillside village abandoned after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey sent its Greek Orthodox residents to Greece; the Muslim families resettled there afterward found the land poorly suited to farming and largely moved on within a few years, leaving several hundred stone houses and two large churches standing empty. The site is now on UNESCO's Tentative World Heritage List.

Coast and Economy

Fethiye's economy today rests on tourism alongside citrus and greenhouse vegetable farming on the fertile plain around the town, and the district is one of Turkey's principal centres for gulet construction and charter, its deep bay dotted with islands that shelter boats from the open sea. Nearby Ölüdeniz, with its enclosed lagoon, and the Butterfly Valley gorge draw many visitors inland from the coast, while Fethiye's own harbour and marina remain the departure point for cruises through the surrounding bays — which is why so many visitors explore Fethiye by private gulet charter, tracing a coastline shaped by Lycian tombs, Ottoman history and a fleet of wooden sailing boats built for exactly this kind of journey.