There are very few places inside Six Senses Kaplankaya where the gleaming Aegean Sea is not visible. The view of glistening blue accompanied me, during a recent visit, from my airy room, down the wide corridors, to the open stairway that connects the building’s four floors. Along the waterfront, stone paths extend in both directions, winding past olive trees and cypresses, sandy secluded beaches and untrammeled Aegean terrain. I could stop to gaze at the sunset in peaceful solitude, completely surrounded by nature—a rarity along the Bodrum coast.
Sustainability is integral to the philosophy of Six Senses, and the Bodrum resort is a perfect showcase. The main building has a green roof and biophilic walls, which enhance the interaction between nature and the built environment; the property has its own compost machine and strict rules about recycling; and treated wastewater is reused for landscaping irrigation. Everything is designed to decrease the impact on the landscape. The resort also hosts regular sustainability workshops for guests, which might focus on creating beauty products using organic ingredients from the garden, or making reusable food wraps from discarded fabric and beeswax.
At Kaplankaya’s six restaurants, ingredients either come from the property’s own organic garden or local farms, markets, and vineyards. Turkish celebrity chef Osman Sezener serves modern Aegean haute cuisine at Anhinga by OD, using the bounty of local ingredients in dishes like fresh octopus carpaccio salad, or shrimp couscous with leek sauce. These are paired with wines from Turkey’s burgeoning vineyards, a growing collection of thriving boutique winemakers that extends from Trakya to the Aegean to Anatolia, reviving endemic grape varieties and winning international awards.
One of Turkey’s most popular seaside destinations in southwestern Turkey with its luxury accommodations, turquoise bays, historic sights and Aegean gastronomy, Bodrum has also felt the negative impacts of mass tourism. Ever since its boom in the 1990s, Bodrum has seen the destruction of its natural environment due to the development of touristic structures.
Yet, like an ever-increasing spark of hope, the commitment to sustainability has begun to extend beyond Six Senses. Having observed the harmful effects of rapid tourism, locals—from chefs to farmers to designers—are looking to reduce their environmental footprint by showcasing the region’s natural bounty.
This is evident at Barbaros Farm in the small Çamarası village, about a half-hour drive away from the bustle of touristic downtown Bodrum, where one morning I met up with permaculture expert Kezban Arslan Alacık. As she picked up a piece of discarded apple, exposing a wriggling mass of worms underneath—her “children,” as she likes to call them—she explained their significance as agents in the creation of the most perfect soil possible. We were standing around the compost heap at the farm, which is a pioneer of community-supported and sustainable agriculture in the area. Founded in 2019 by Kerem Yılmaz, whose family owns the land, it wasn’t until Alacık joined a year later that a dedicated system of permaculture was put in place. With the help of her volunteers, Alacık specifically designs, grows, and harvests gardens for each of their weekly subscribers, including local chefs and individuals who appreciate produce that grows and tastes as nature intended.
One customer is Zişan Altıncaba, who runs the kitchen at Dereköy Lokantası, a small restaurant in the small seaside village of Gümüşlük, about a 40-minute drive from Bodrum town. Here we dined on reinterpreted Aegean dishes such as fennel salad and artichoke with local Aegean cibes root. Co-owners Özgür Arıkan and Merve Tatari are responsible for the restaurant’s breezy Aegean interiors: raffia pendant lights, natural dyed textiles, terra cotta tableware. They also run Leleg Living, an adjacent boutique selling their design wares from the restaurant, all made by local craftspeople using natural materials.
I discovered the same low impact aesthetic at Gibi Bodrum in downtown Bodrum, founded by a group of friends during the pandemic. A café and retail space that is preferred by the younger crowd, it is filled with eco-friendly versions of everyday objects: handcrafted straw hats, ceramics and natural soaps made by local artisans.
My journey ends at Karnas Vineyards, which produces low-intervention and sustainable wines. The winery was founded by the İşmen family in 2005 as a small producer of Zinfandel—a grape the family fell in love with when they visited Napa Valley, in California. Over glasses of chilled rose wine, I watched the wide vista of Bodrum’s natural world change colors in the sunset, a slight summer breeze playing among the olive trees. I felt hopeful for this summer town and its villages, for a future of more conscious enjoyment of its many natural beauties, from the sea to the vines, from the farms to the streets of its most bustling urban center.
Travel + Leisure, September 2023
Feride Yalav-Heckeroth 