Cukurbag Peninsula

West of the town of Kaş, a narrow finger of land reaches roughly 5 kilometres out into the Mediterranean before curving back toward the mainland: this is the Çukurbağ Peninsula, so slender at one point, near İnceboğaz, that it narrows to barely 100 metres wide. Rocky and pebbled rather than sandy, it is covered in low pine and scrub, with the water around it shifting between deep blue and turquoise depending on the depth of the seabed below. Its highest ground rises only to about 112 metres, so almost nowhere along its spine is the view blocked for long, and from the ridge road you can usually see the open sea on one side and a sheltered channel on the other.

A Narrow Finger of Land Between Two Waters

The peninsula effectively creates two different seas. On the southern side the coast drops straight into open Mediterranean water, exposed and deep. On the northern side lies the sheltered channel known locally as Bucak Denizi, the stretch that Kaş harbour and the marina sit on. Walking the road that runs out along the ridge you cross from one to the other in a couple of minutes at İnceboğaz, where the land is at its thinnest. The shoreline itself is almost entirely rock and pebble rather than beach, and swimmers generally enter from concrete platforms or from small coves cut into the limestone rather than wading in off sand.

Development came late and unevenly. The western end was bought by the Ankara Journalists' Association in the 1970s, construction was permitted from the 1980s onward, and the peninsula now carries a scattering of small hotels and villas rather than large resorts. A fire burned across part of it in May 2018. Later that same year the whole peninsula was formally registered as a natural site in the category "sustainable conservation and controlled use area", a designation approved on 25 December 2018, which sets limits on what may be built and where.

Antiphellos, the Ancient City at the Peninsula's Neck

Kaş stands on the ruins of Antiphellos, which began as the harbour of Phellos, a Lycian town in the hills inland, and eventually outgrew its parent. It held a single vote in the Lycian League from the middle of the 2nd century BC. Its theatre sits about 500 metres west of the modern main square, right where the road turns onto the peninsula: a Hellenistic building of the 1st century BC with seating for roughly 4,000 people, unusual in that it was never given a stage building behind the orchestra, so the sea view was left open. Its eastern wall collapsed at some point, quite possibly in the earthquake of AD 141 that damaged much of Lycia.

Two tombs in the town centre are worth finding on the way out. The Lion Tomb, a 4th-century-BC sarcophagus still standing where it was raised, is named for the lion heads projecting from its lid and carries a nine-line verse inscription in Lycian B, a language that has still not been deciphered. The Doric Tomb, cut from the rock and roughly 4.5 metres to a side, has a relief of dancing girls on an inner wall. When the English traveller Charles Fellows passed through in April 1840 he counted more than a hundred tombs around the site. Pliny the Elder recorded that the softest sponges in the Mediterranean came from these waters.

Kastellorizo Across the Channel

From the southern shore the Greek island of Kastellorizo, called Meis in Turkish, lies about 2 kilometres away, close enough that its houses are visible without binoculars. It is the easternmost island in Greece and sits some 125 kilometres from Rhodes, its nearest sizeable Greek neighbour, with a land area of around 9 square kilometres and 594 residents at the 2021 census. Its ancient name was Megisti, "the greatest", because it was the largest of its own small cluster of islets. People in Kaş have long described the shape of the town and its peninsula as an eyebrow, "kaş" in Turkish, arched over the eye of Meis.

Anchoring Off the Peninsula

Boats use both sides. The exposed southern coast has buoys and daytime anchorages in the small coves, while the northern side offers proper shelter, with Kaş Marina holding 472 berths behind seven floating pontoons plus hard standing for another 160 boats. Because the peninsula sits right at the edge of town, within sight of the Antiphellos theatre, this stretch of coast has become a classic stop on a Kas blue cruise itinerary, giving crews a calm overnight berth and a short walk into a place whose ancient core is still standing.