Guide
This national park joins two things that grew apart from one another: a peninsula and a river delta. Protection came to them thirty years apart — the Dilek peninsula was gazetted in 1966, and the mouth of the Büyük Menderes was added only in 1994. Their areas are 10,985 and 16,613 hectares, giving 27,598 in all, spread across the Kuşadası, Söke and Didim districts of Aydın. In the way the land formed, the two are halves of one story: they began at the same point, developed in opposite directions, and still work as a single unit.
Land, sea and fresh water all fall inside the boundary, and four kinds of vegetation grow here — phrygana, maquis, forest, and the salt-tolerant and aquatic communities. The range of habitats is what the Directorate emphasises. There is sand and there is rock: beaches, and cliffs above the shore. There is standing water at several depths: lagoons and wetlands along the coast, sandy shallows that never dry, and the flats of mud and sand that surface in the tidal zone when the water drops. There are salty grounds, both marsh and meadow. There are wide bays and coves, all of them shallow. And under the water there are Posidonia beds, reefs, and caves reached from the sea or from half-enclosed water.
Some of the finest maquis in the country grows on the peninsula, and its northern aspects also carry species that belong to the flora of the Black Sea. As for the delta, migratory birds in the Aegean have few places that matter more, and sea fish spawn there.
The park holds several layers of protection at once: as a national park, a natural conservation site, an archaeological site and an urban conservation site, and under the Bern convention on European wildlife and habitats, the Rio convention on biological diversity, and the Barcelona convention on protecting the Mediterranean from pollution.
In summer the peninsula becomes a place local people come to for the sea. The entrance is on Millî Park Caddesi in the Güzelçamlı quarter, and the park's stated capacity is 10,000 visitors and 1,505 vehicles.
- Designated
- 19.05.1966
