Yayla Migration

Randy Olson

Aurora / National Geographic Society

The closest mountain peaks ever get to the sea is in an area of Turkey defined by the Pontic Alps on the Black Sea coast. This area, cut off to the world by geography, is also the place where a mountain to sea migration has been going on since the neolithic. Mountain homes are called Yaylas (YIY-luz) and most families have more than one. Families fish at the coast and as the temperatures rise, they move to a succession of homes higher in the mountain range. These homes are community property and bequeathed during the Ottoman period. Traditional Yayla lifestyle is under assault by one of the strangest of bedfellows. Sharing borders with Georgia, this area of Turkey has become the jumping off point for prostitutes from the fallen Soviet Union. When an Islamic farmer goes to town to sell his calf, he often wanders out, dazed with no money for beans to feed his family

Randy Olson, "Yayla Migration," in POYi Archive, Item #33560, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/33560 (accessed May 13, 2024).