Domuz Island

Domuz Island, literally Pig Island in Turkish, is a small uninhabited island in the Gulf of Fethiye on Turkey's southwestern coast. The name comes from the wild boar once believed to roam its slopes; the animals are long gone, and what remains is a low outcrop of pine and olive trees standing in unusually clear water, administratively part of the Fethiye district of Mugla province.

Geography and Setting

The island sits at 36 degrees 39 minutes north, 28 degrees 53 minutes east, and covers roughly 1.5 square kilometres. It lies about 250 metres from Tersane Island to the east and only around 100 metres from the Kapidag Peninsula near Dalaman to the southwest, so the channel separating it from the mainland is genuinely narrow. That places it inside the sheltered cruising ground running between Gocek and Fethiye, an area ringed by pine-covered mountains and studded with islands, and explains why it turns up so regularly on the twelve-island boat trips that leave Fethiye each morning. Its neighbour Tersane, the largest island in the gulf, was known in antiquity as Telandria and later held an Ottoman naval shipyard; its Greek villagers left during the 1923 population exchange, and their stone houses still stand.

From the Khedive of Egypt to a Newspaper Family

Domuz Island's ownership history is unusually well documented for so small a place. In the late Ottoman period it formed part of the Dalaman estate held by Abbas Hilmi II, the last Khedive of Egypt, who ruled from 1892 until his deposition in 1914 and who was sent to Dalaman in 1903 to develop the plain there. A keen hunter, he had a pier and a store built at Sarsila Cove and a road cut inland to his farm. After the estate was nationalised in the Republican era, the Turkish treasury sold the island to Sedat Simavi, the journalist and publisher who founded the newspaper Hurriyet on 1 May 1948. The island was accordingly renamed Hurriyet Adasi, Liberty Island, and it has remained associated with the Simavi family ever since.

Ruins Above and Below the Water

Ancient masonry is scattered across the island and along its shoreline, some of it dating to the Byzantine period and including the remains of monastic buildings and dwellings; traces linked to the First World War have also been recorded. Part of this material lies below the waterline, and those submerged remains are the reason boats cannot simply anchor anywhere they like around the coast. Divers and snorkellers work the clear water off the island, and loggerhead turtles are occasionally seen feeding close to shore.

Visiting by Boat

There is no settlement, no harbour and no facilities of any kind on Domuz Island, so it functions purely as a stop rather than a destination in its own right. Yachts generally bring up on the northern side, in the cove usually called Panco, where the water is calm and sheltered. It is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Fethiye, normally as part of a longer day working through the quieter corners of the gulf.