Cultural connections forged in southern town

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The village of Kayaköy hosted the international Kaya Connections Festival.

The hillside village of Kayaköy, which is located in the southwestern province of Muğla, has finished hosting a festival called Kaya Connections, a multicultural international festival of literature, music, art, food and culture that brought hundreds of people to the village.

The six-day program, from April 27 to May 3, connected Turkey and Greece with a celebration of literature, film, music and food. The festival brought together British writers Louis de Bernières, Victoria Hislop, and Jeremy Seal who flew over from the United Kingdom, British/Greek author Sofka Zinovieff (whose heritage is Russian), Turkish filmmakers Çağan Irmak, Mustafa Oğuz and Yusuf Karabol, as well as San Fu Maltha from the Netherlands.

This year, de Bernières led a group of more than 120 people through the deserted ruins of Levissi, a town that was mainly home to Christians until their forced migration to Greece under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.