Lake Köyceğiz
Reed-lined freshwater lake feeding a river delta once fought over by hoteliers and turtle conservationists.
This guide to Lake Köyceğiz in Muğla follows the water south through the Dalyan channel to Iztuzu beach, and the April nineteen eighty-seven morning when bulldozers, funded by German development aid, began work on a huge hotel over one of the Mediterranean's last loggerhead turtle nesting grounds. It reaches back two thousand years to the port of Kaunos, whose harbor silted shut despite an emperor's tax break for merchants. An English sailor named June Haimoff, living in a beach hut on Iztuzu since nineteen eighty-four, brought the World Wildlife Fund and Prince Philip into the fight over this same shoreline.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.