The Aegean coast of Turkey boasts empty beaches closest to the heart of Europe. Free of foreign tourists and yet hospitable, the 70-kilometre stretch between Troy and Babakale is an ideal, and very affordable, escape from the resorts’ crowds even in August. It’s so very quiet between Çanakkale and the tiny harbour of Babakale.

Fishermen and farmers, who have always lived there, cater to Turkish tourists but not foreigners in the summer months. Their tiny, agricultural villages have not changed in the past 40 years ago, giving them a pleasant authentic feel. Separated by vast beaches, shaded by old trees, they are the charm of this stretch of Turkish coast. Travelling down from either Istanbul or the Turkish border crossings with Greece or Bulgaria, you have to take a ferry to reach Çanakkale. The trip across the Dardanelle takes half an hour but queuing to get on the ferry may take double that time.

The salty wind – once the ferry is out on the waves – is soothing after the sizzling wait on the waterfront. Half an hour is also just enough to pick your teeth clean from the remains of a tasty, buttered corn on the cob, with plenty of salt.



Not many foreigners will be crossing with you to Çanakkale. Those who do are usually heading for one of two destinations: the ruins of Troy or the island of Bozçaada.

Çanakkale itself has little of interest. On the southern outskirts of the town, there is a really good supermarket with provisions that may be more difficult to find in the villages to come.

The remains of Troy lay 20 kilometres south of Çanakkale.

Until 1871, Troy was generally thought to have existed in legend only. The plain where the ruins lay was associated with the Troy that Homer wrote about in The Iliad. But all traces of the city had vanished completely.

It took an obsessed German businessman to prove that the legend was founded in truth.

Schliemann had revelled in the myths of ancient Greece from a very young age. He studied and even taught ancient Greek. But the family he was born into was too poor for him to be able to afford a life of leisure as an amateur-archaeologist.

First he had to make his own fortune – which did in America during the Californian Gold Rush.

At the age of 46, Schliemann was finally rich enough. He called commerce a day and sought permission from the Ottoman government to start digging for Troy on a hill where earlier excavators had already found the remains of a Classical temple.

Schliemann uncovered nine layers of city remains, giving Troy a lifespan of over 4,000 years.

He also dug up a cache of beautiful jewellery known as the Treasure of Priam that he smuggled back to Berlin. He put the rare collection on display there until 1941, after taking numerous photographs of his wife Sophia with it. It disappeared after invasion of the Red Army at the end of the Second World War and resurfaced almost 50 years later in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

A legal battle between the German and the Russian governments over the ownership is now on-going, as is the controversy on the treasure’s authenticity and whether it was found on the spot.

The ruins of Troy leave a lot to the imagination. The legendary wooden horse was reproduced in an unimpressive playground at the entrance of the archaeological site. Besides offering the fun of climbing it and banging its wooden window blinds, it evokes gratitude that no attempt was made to reproduce the other legend of Troy: the beautiful Helena.

Yet the ruins remain the backdrop of some of the most famous verses in world literature and that alone makes them worth the detour.

As you wander amongst the ruins’ quiet presence, you could almost hear Achilles’s rant from The Iliad: “You talk of food? I have no taste for food. What I crave is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men!” Quite a contrast to the present peacefulness.

As you drive south, away from Troy, you have two possibilities.

Either you head for the island of Bozçaada – or you travel further down towards Babakale.

The roads become narrower and start winding from here onwards.



But then suddenly a wide stretch, about two kilometres in length, opens. It leads to the port of the ferry to Bozçaada – one of the two Aegean islands that remained in Turkish hands after the Treaty of Lausanne that ended Greek-Turkish war.

Under the terms of the agreement the inhabitants of Bozçcaada and the neighbouring and bigger island of Gökçeada were exempt from the Greek-Turkish population exchange of the same year. And for 40 years the Greek population of Bozçaada was indeed left to itself.

But this changed with the 1964 Cyprus conflict. The Turkish government decided to “claim” the island more explicitly with policies of land expropriation without compensation and the closure of Greek schools. The measures had the desired effect and the bulk of the Greek population left.

Today fewer than a hundred elderly Orthodox Greeks remain on the island.

But the architectural aura of the island and its only town – with cobbled streets and a good number of old houses with overhanging upper floors – is still very Greek. Although a handful of medieval mosques also prove that the population has historically been one fourth Muslim.

Bozçaada was forbidden territory for foreigners until 1987. It is a flat terrain, with farms and sheep and vineyards which produce excellent wine.

Most visitors come from Istanbul – to wind down and have a quiet weekend.

There are plenty of places that offer accommodation – not always cheap and quite busy during the summer – and the harbour is cluttered with simple restaurants offering fresh fish.



But the true treasure of this stretch of coast is to be found below Bozçaada.

First you drive through a sprawling holiday settlement for the Turkish lower middle classes – whose members all seem to enjoy going for walks early in the morning. In the first hours after sunrise the roads of Iskelesi and Geykili are swarming with speed-walking younger and older women and men in training suits.



Once you’ve left those purple and orange walkers behind, you enter a territory that is maybe best defined by the tomatoes sold in many tiny stalls along the road.

Fleshy and so rich in taste – they make you think: this is paradise lost. Tomatoes from another time, long before our modern one.

The villages you drive through enhance that feeling. They breathe standstill.

Men drinking tea stare at you while you pass. Women with dark and wrinkled faces – their plump bodies hidden in long wide skirts – carry groceries home. A butcher sells the same sausages that his great grandfather sold.



Fishermen leave the harbours in tiny boats that would be unable to provide a living anywhere else in Europe. But here, that’s all they have.

Along the south-bound road, there is what seems to be an endless sequence of long and narrow, mostly sandy, beaches. There are hardly any people on them even in August.

There are no foreign tourists but, here and there, the beaches are spotted with entire Turkish families. They have come for picnics, rather than sunbathing. The grandmothers spread out huge blankets on which they clean vegetables and meat. The men start a fire. Children run around, dipping their feet in the sea.

Babakale lays at the very end of this stretch of coast - not much more than 50 kilometres from Çanakkale. It requires a steep last effort to get there. The road is so narrow that the danger of falling off of it, past the cliffs and into the sea below, seems very real.

But then a dusty gate appears ahead and you drive onto a square that looks like cow hide that’s lost all its hair. On the right hand side is an Ottoman castle dating from 1726. On the left, a statue of Atatürk observes you quietly.

Behind the square starts the village itself. With narrow winding streets that hide faded but perfectly acceptable hostels and small restaurants with terraces overlooking the harbour itself – some 30 metres below.



It’s the perfect place to make yourself invisible for a week. Drinking small glasses of tea on sleepy terraces, which overlook the fishermen’s port, people-watching from a bench on the square, or tasting the single soup of a local restaurant –Babakale offers precious hours of quietness that very few sea towns in Europe and its vicinity have managed to preserve in the last decades.

Babakale and the stretch of coast that leads to it are a hidden treasure. Even if, in all honesty, the sea is a tad too cold and often hides a thriving population of sea urchins. But the sun goes down on them majestically. Every evening.

Practicalities

Normally, you don’t need to book a room before arrival. It is only in August that you may find that hotels are fully booked. The area also offers accommodation in many of the houses along the beach. The prices are as low as 25-30 euros for a complete floor of a villa, where 3-4 people can share a bathroom.

The drive from the border with Bulgaria is about 350 km and takes about 7 hours. From Istanbul the car drive is at least one hour longer – apart from covering over 400 km, you would be driving along quite slow roads in the European part of Turkey. The alternative is to cross the sea of Marmara by ferry to Bandirma, which shortens the driving distance to 250 km.

There are four ferries a day to Bosçaada during the summer, leaving from Yukyeri Iskelesi, 60 km southwest of Çanakkale. Sometimes there is a long queue, especially during weekends in July and August. The hours of the ferry are not fixed, and you can’t book places on it in advance.

The exit for Troy is well signposted on the main road from Çanakkale to Izmir. The site is open from 8 AM, and in the summer is a good idea to visit the ruins as early as possible to avoid the heat. The closing hours are 7 PM at summer and 5 PM at winter. To make the most of the site, you may need between 2 and 3 hours. Apart from the ruins, there is a museum, where you can see Troy scaled down to a toy town, as well as photos that document the pioneering, and yet sloppy, work of Schliemann at the end of the nineteenth century.

When heading for Babakale, do bring cash because the nearest cash machine is about 50 km away.

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