Turkey's Turquoise Coast: A Deep Dive
Somewhere between Marmaris and Kaş, the Mediterranean changes character. The water turns the colour that gave this shoreline its name, pine forests run straight down to the tide line, and the ruins of an entire vanished civilisation — Lycia — sit half-submerged in the shallows. The Turquoise Coast, roughly 250 nautical miles of indented shoreline along Turkey's southwest, is one of the world's great cruising grounds, and unlike many of its Mediterranean rivals it still offers genuinely empty anchorages in June.
Göcek and its twelve islands
Göcek is the beating heart of the coast, a small town wrapped around a gulf scattered with the famous Twelve Islands. Within a five-mile radius you can anchor off Tersane Island among Ottoman-era shipyard ruins, swim in Bedri Rahmi Bay where the Turkish painter left a fish fresco on the rocks in 1973, or drop the hook in Boynuz Bükü beneath a wall of pine. The gulf is sheltered from almost every direction, depths are forgiving, and the holding in mud and sand is excellent — which is why flotilla companies and charter fleets base themselves here in numbers.
The town itself punches far above its weight in marina infrastructure. D-Marin Göcek is the flagship, with around 380 berths and a travel lift, while Club Marina Göcek sits across the bay in its own landscaped grounds. Marintürk Göcek Village adds further capacity on the eastern shore, and the municipal quay still takes a handful of visiting yachts at a fraction of the price. Few places on the Mediterranean offer four marinas within a single small gulf.
Lycian ruins on the waterline
What sets this coast apart from anywhere else under sail is the archaeology you can reach with a dinghy. In Kekova Roads, east of Kaş, an earthquake in the 2nd century dropped the Lycian town of Simena partly below sea level; you sail along the north shore of Kekova Island over staircases and house foundations clearly visible through the water. Anchoring and swimming directly over the sunken city is prohibited to protect the site, but the anchorage at Üçağız, inside the same sheltered sound, puts you a short dinghy ride from the castle of Kaleköy, where a Lycian sarcophagus stands knee-deep in the harbour shallows.
Further west, the great cities of Lycia line up like waypoints: Patara with its 12-kilometre beach and excavated parliament building, Xanthos and Letoon (a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site), and the rock tombs of Dalyan reached by river boat from the anchorage at Ekincik. No other cruising ground lets you tick off a UNESCO list between swims.
The gulet tradition
The wooden gulet — broad-beamed, heavily varnished, usually ketch-rigged in name only — is the signature vessel of this coast. The design grew out of sponge-diving and cargo boats built in the yards of Bodrum and Marmaris, and the building tradition is still alive: yards in Bozburun and Bodrum's İçmeler district still lay up hulls in pine and eucalyptus. A "Blue Cruise" (Mavi Yolculuk) aboard a crewed gulet is how most Turks experience this coast, a tradition popularised by the writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, the "Fisherman of Halicarnassus", in the 1950s.
For bareboat sailors, gulets matter for a practical reason: they take the prime stern-to spots on restaurant jetties early in the afternoon. Arrive in popular bays like Kumlubükü or Selimiye by 15:00 if you want a spot on the dock — Kumlubükü Yacht Club, the long-standing restaurant jetty known to regulars by its founder Hollandalı Ahmet, is a classic example of the eat-where-you-moor arrangement that defines Turkish cruising.
Marmaris: the charter capital
Marmaris, tucked at the head of a nearly landlocked bay, is where most charters begin. Netsel Marina sits right in the town centre with around 720 berths and a shopping arcade at the foot of the gangways; Marmaris Yacht Marina, a couple of miles east in the inner bay, is one of the largest yards in the Mediterranean with hardstanding for over 900 boats and a busy liveaboard community every winter. Albatros Marina and Adaköy Marina add further capacity around the bay's eastern arm.
From Marmaris the classic first hop is south around the peninsula to Serçe Limanı, a bottle-shaped natural harbour, or west into the Gulf of Hisarönü, where Marti Marina at Orhaniye offers a full-service stop beneath terraced hills and the famous sandspit of Kızkumu lets you walk on water across the bay.
Bozburun, Selimiye and the slow gulf
The Bozburun peninsula is the coast at its most unhurried. Selimiye, a village strung around a deep bay, has morphed into one of the most loved stops on the entire coast: a dozen restaurant pontoons, a short waterfront of cafés, and hills behind that still smell of thyme. Bozburun itself, the gulet-building village, has a small modern marina and a workmanlike harbour where boatyards still steam planks the traditional way. Between the two, anchorages like Dirsek Bükü — reachable only by boat — give you a restaurant, a jetty and absolutely nothing else.
Fethiye to Kaş: the open coast
East of Göcek the coast straightens and the sailing gets more honest. The afternoon westerly fills in reliably to 15-20 knots in summer, making the run from Fethiye toward Kalkan and Kaş a glorious downwind ride. Fethiye's bay offers the full spread: the municipal Port of Fethiye, Ece Marina in the town centre, and Yes Marina among the options, plus the lagoon postcard of Ölüdeniz just over the hill (closed to yachts, but worth the paraglider's view from Babadağ at 1,969 metres). Kaş Marina, opened in 2011 in Bucak Bay, is the last full-service marina before the long, harbourless stretch toward Kekova and Finike — and one of the prettiest, facing the Greek island of Kastellorizo barely two miles offshore.
Seasons, winds and paperwork
The season runs April to early November. July and August bring 30°C-plus heat and the strongest afternoon meltemi-influenced westerlies; May, June, September and October are the sweet spots, with water above 22°C well into autumn. Charts note the prevailing summer wind as W-NW, building after noon and dying at dusk — plan long passages for the morning.
Practicalities: Turkey is outside the EU and Schengen, so arriving from Greece means clearing in at a port of entry such as Fethiye, Marmaris, Bodrum or Kaş, and every foreign-flagged yacht needs a transit log. Many crews deliberately combine the Turkish coast with the adjacent Greek Dodecanese — Rhodes lies just 25 miles from the Bozburun peninsula — but budget time and agent fees for the double clearance. Tap water at marinas is fine for tanks; holding-tank rules are enforced, with pump-out facilities at the major marinas and a Blue Card waste-tracking system in force in Muğla province waters.
Explore on the map
The Turquoise Coast rewards slow exploration, and the best planning tool is a chart you can wander across. Open the interactive map to browse marinas from Netsel Marina Marmaris to Kaş Marina, check what lies behind each headland, and trace your own route through the Twelve Islands. Zoom into Turkey on the map and start plotting the gulf-by-gulf itinerary — the pine trees and the stern lines are waiting.