Bedri Rahmi Bay

Bedri Rahmi Bay sits on the Göcek shore of the Gulf of Fethiye, in Muğla Province, and carries two names: today's, and the older one, Taşyaka, roughly "stone shore." The change came from a single painting on a rock at the water's edge, which is an unusual origin story for a place name and a fair summary of what this bay is about.

The Fish on the Rock

Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu was born in 1911 in Görele, on the Black Sea coast in Giresun province, and died in Istanbul on 21 September 1975. He entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1929, went to France in 1931, learning the language in Dijon and Lyon before training in André Lhote's studio in Paris, and from 1936 exhibited with the D Group. He taught at the Academy, later Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, until his death. His public commissions were substantial: a large panel for the Ankara Opera House in 1946, a 250 square metre mosaic for Expo 58 in Brussels, and another mosaic for NATO's Paris headquarters in 1960. He was a poet as well, with collections including Karadut in 1948 and Tuz in 1952, and he wrote an art column for the newspaper Cumhuriyet between 1952 and 1958.

In 1974 he painted a fish on a rock in what was then Taşyaka Bay. At a glance it reads as one simple fish outline, but worked into it are six separate animal figures: fish, snake, bird, lizard, butterfly and rooster. The painting stayed, the name of the bay changed with it, and the work is retouched and maintained every year. It has become the emblem of both the cove and Göcek generally, and it is the first thing crews point out as a boat comes in.

Why a Painter Was Here at All

Eyüboğlu was not a passing tourist. He belonged to the original circle behind the Mavi Yolculuk, the Blue Voyage, the tradition of sailing this coast on working wooden boats that began in the mid-1940s and became the direct ancestor of today's gulet charter. The first voyage, in 1945, was led by the writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, better known as the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, and Bedri Rahmi was aboard alongside his brother, the essayist Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, and the writers Sabahattin Ali and Necati Cumalı.

The tradition acquired a literature with Azra Erhat's book Mavi Yolculuk in 1962. Erhat credited Cevat Şakir with founding the thing and Sabahattin Eyüboğlu with giving it its name. Seen that way, the fish on the rock is less a decoration than a signature left behind by one of the people who invented the idea of cruising this coastline for pleasure.

Krya: The Ruins Above the Water

Scattered in the pines above the water are the remains of Krya, a small ancient town. The identification is probable rather than proven, since Taşyaka is the most likely site and ancient authorities place Krya on the Gulf of Fethiye, and the town sat in the contested border country between Caria and Lycia, which is why sources assign it to one or the other.

The site is genuinely modest: a tiny acropolis on a steep hill with the remains of an early wall and a tower, reached by a rock-cut stairway. Down at the shoreline is an Ionic temple tomb carrying an inscription in Carian, and rock-cut tombs of the Lycian type are set into the slopes along with the smaller niche graves often called pigeon-hole tombs. Krya appears in the Athenian tribute lists paying a third of a talent, which places it inside the Delian League in the fifth century BC, and Pliny records it under the curious name Crya fugitivorum, Crya of the fugitives, for reasons nobody has satisfactorily explained.

Göcek and Its Protected Coastline

The cove itself is small and enclosed by pine-covered hills, its clear water better suited to swimming and snorkelling than to sunbathing, since the shore is mostly stone rather than sand. It is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Gocek, usually for an afternoon before the boat moves on to the next bay.

The wider reason this coast still looks the way it does is regulatory. On 12 June 1988, by decision of the Council of Ministers, the Fethiye–Göcek area was declared one of Turkey's first Special Environmental Protection Areas, covering around 816 square kilometres, roughly 471 on land and 345 at sea, with about 235 kilometres of coastline. Multi-storey building is restricted inside it, which is why Göcek remains a low-rise town instead of a wall of hotels.

Before yachting, Göcek's economy was mining traffic: during the Ottoman period its harbour loaded ships with chrome ore brought down from mines in the mountains behind the town. Today it holds one of the densest concentrations of berths on the Turkish coast, with D-Marin at around 380 berths, Club Marina at 195, Marinturk Village Port at 140 in the water and Skopea Marina at 80, among others. Bedri Rahmi Bay is a short run out from all of them.