Yörük Nomad Heritage

The Yörüks are the Turkic pastoral communities of Anatolia who moved seasonally between winter quarters on the coastal plains and summer pastures - yayla - high in the Taurus, following grass and avoiding heat. Their black tent, woven from goat hair, sheds rain when the fibres swell and breathes in dry weather, and it is the object most associated with them, along with the flat-woven kilims and cicims made on ground looms by women, whose motifs carried meaning about family, protection and status. Very few families still migrate fully; settlement policies through the twentieth century, land enclosure and simple economics ended it for most, and what survives is partial - some households still take flocks up in summer, many more keep a yayla house and go for the season out of habit and heat. Museums at Antalya, Mersin and Fethiye hold tents and weavings, and yayla festivals in summer bring music, wrestling and food.

What to look for

• The black tents - goat-hair shelters on the high pastures.
• The ground looms - kilim and cicim weaving by hand.
• The summer yaylas - villages and camps at altitude.
• The yayla festivals - music, wrestling and food in season.

When to go

June to September, when families are up on the pastures. Yayla festivals cluster in July and August; dates are local and best asked about in the nearest town.

Before you go

These are people's homes and working camps, not an attraction - visits happen through hospitality or local introduction, and turning up with a camera is not it. Full nomadic migration has largely ended; what you see is a remnant.

Nearby

Taurus yaylas above Antalya, Mersin and Adana; the ethnographic museums in those cities hold the material.