Iztuzu Beach

Iztuzu Beach, also known as Turtle Beach, is a 4.5-kilometre stretch of sand near Dalyan in Turkey's Mugla province, forming a natural barrier between the freshwater delta of the Dalyan river and the open Mediterranean. It is one of the Mediterranean's principal nesting grounds for the endangered loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta), with an average of around 300 nests recorded on the beach each season.

A Sandbar Between River and Sea

The beach lies in the Ortaca district of Mugla, at the point where the Dalyan river finally reaches the sea after threading through a maze of reed-lined channels fed by Lake Koycegiz. That sandbar geography is what makes the place unusual: on one side sits warm, shallow, salt-free water and dense reed beds, on the other an open Mediterranean shore with a gently shelving gradient. The whole wetland belongs to the Koycegiz-Dalyan Special Environmental Protection Area, which treats the lake, the delta channels and the beach as a single ecological unit rather than protecting the sand in isolation.

The Nesting Season

Loggerheads come ashore at Iztuzu between May and October, with the heaviest activity in June and July. A nesting female hauls herself up the beach at night, digs a chamber with her rear flippers and lays somewhere in the region of 100 to 120 eggs before covering the nest and returning to the water. Incubation takes roughly 50 to 60 days, after which the hatchlings dig their way out, usually after dark, and orient themselves towards the brighter horizon over the sea. Nests laid too close to the waterline, or in spots at risk of flooding, are relocated by researchers to safer ground, and every nest is marked and monitored through to emergence.

How the Beach Was Saved

None of this was inevitable. In April 1987 construction began on the Kaunos Beach Hotel, an 1,800-bed complex planned directly behind the nesting sand. The campaign against it was led by June Haimoff, a British woman who had settled in a stilted fisherman's hut on the beach and became known locally as Kaptan June, working alongside Turkish and international conservation organisations. The pressure told: in July 1988 the Turkish government designated the beach and its hinterland a Special Environmental Protection Area, and the hotel was never finished.

Protection came with rules, and they are still enforced. The beach closes to the public between 20:00 and 08:00 from May to October, vehicles and animals are banned from the sand, parasols, sunbeds and towels are kept out of the marked nesting zones, and speedboats are excluded from a one-mile zone covering the beach and the river mouth. Monitoring since the regulations began has shown a stable, and in places growing, turtle population, which is why Iztuzu is now cited as one of the Mediterranean's conservation success stories.

DEKAMER and the Turtles You Can Actually See

At the eastern end of the beach stands DEKAMER, the Sea Turtle Research, Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, set up in 2008 and operating from 2009 under the biology department of Pamukkale University. Admission is free. Injured turtles, most of them struck by boat propellers or tangled in fishing gear, are treated in open tanks that visitors can walk between, and a small museum explains nesting biology and the history of the beach's protection. Haimoff's own Kaptan June Sea Turtle Conservation Foundation was established in February 2011 to carry the work forward.

The beach's reputation has travelled well beyond Turkey. The Times named it Europe's Best Open Space in 2008, and in 2011 the Dutch travel site Zoover voted it Best Beach Destination of Europe. Facilities are deliberately restrained: cafes, showers, changing cabins and toilets sit back from the nesting strip, and sunbeds are confined to the two ends of the beach so the central sand stays clear.

Kaunos and Getting to the Beach

The delta hides a second attraction. The Carian city of Kaunos, founded as early as the 9th or 8th century BC, sits on the western bank of the river, and its temple-fronted rock tombs, cut between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC and forming part of a necropolis of more than 170 graves, stare down over the passing boats. Kaunos was once a working port, but the delta silted up around it over the centuries, leaving the ruins stranded several kilometres inland. The site now sits on Turkey's UNESCO World Heritage tentative list.

Iztuzu Beach can be reached by boat along the Dalyan river or by road from the town centre, and it has become a classic stop on a Gocek blue cruise itinerary for visitors exploring the wider Fethiye-Gocek coastline by gulet. The river route is the better one: the flat-bottomed boats pass the rock tombs and the reed channels on the way, and arriving from the water rather than the car park gives a much clearer sense of why this narrow bar of sand matters.