We have no museum.
We have so many
stories to tell.
What do you think has been lost in Köyceğiz?
This page is a museum. It has six display cases and all of them are empty — because the museum does not exist yet. The labels beneath them say what belongs inside. The emptiness is not a gap; it is the argument.
Photograph: Gedova Island, Lake Köyceğiz · Köyceğiz · Arıktekin, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
We count people, not amounts. Every signature is the same size, and every signature stands on the wall under its own name.
The target is the town-centre population given in the project concept file (12,767).
What has Köyceğiz lost?
Ask anyone in Köyceğiz and they have an answer. Some count the sweetgums on the lakeshore, some the fishing season at the weirs, some a mani verse no one sings any more. The answers differ; what they share is that none of them is recorded anywhere.
Some things we do know; the figures just below are a few of them. What they share is that there is no place in the district to tell these stories.
We count what is lost not to mourn it but to record it. A museum does not bring back what has gone; it gives what remains an address, and lets knowledge pass from one generation to the next without thinning. We want to build the museum of Köyceğiz together with the state's institutions, with a university, and with the people who live in this town.
So we start with a question: what do you think Köyceğiz has lost? Your answer can be a photograph, a story, or simply a signature — each is a brick in the same wall.
of the sweetgum forest lost in fifty years — from 6,500 to 800 ha
Project concept fileyears of continuous excavation at Kaunos — none of it told in Köyceğiz
Presslakes in the world said to have a “foot” — Köyceğiz is Türkiye's only one
Local accountmuseums in the district — today
Project concept filemuseums in Muğla province (TurkStat, 2025) — none of them in Köyceğiz
Pressendemic plant species recorded in the Köyceğiz-Dalyan protection area — with no reference collection in the district
Institutional sourceThe sweetgum, excavation and museum figures come from the project concept file. The count of lakes with a “foot” is an account told locally; none of it has been independently verified. The endemic species count comes from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation's Köyceğiz-Dalyan Special Environmental Protection Area publication (source 12). The Muğla museum count is TurkStat's 2025 cultural heritage figure; that year 1,202,505 people visited the province's museums and sites (source 16).
Put your name on the wall
These signatures are not a petition but a public record. Your name and one-sentence reason go into the list of requests attached to the initiative's formal application.
Your brick is laid.
The signature wall
0 / 12,767The wall is still empty.
Like the museum. Lay the first brick.
Six empty cases
Each label says what belongs inside
The Basin
How the lake formed, the alluvium, the legend of a settlement beneath the water.
Open the case →
Karia's Southern Frontier
Kaunos: a harbour closed by silt, and sixty years of excavation.
Open the case →
The Sweetgum
A tree that grows wild only in Türkiye and on Rhodes, and the craft of distilling it.
Open the case →
The Herbarium
A scientific reference collection of the local flora — it does not exist.
Open the case →
Lake and People
A lake with a foot, white water lilies, weir fishing and citrus.
Open the case →
Intangible Heritage
Tales, folk verses, games, recipes — none of them fit on a shelf.
Open the case →Stories told as you scroll
Each story is a few stops; every stop carries its source. Frames are real photographs; concept drawings are clearly labelled.
Sixty years of a lion
From an illegal dig to the town square: the object in one place, its context in another.
Watch →
Seventy years of the sweetgum
Muğla's sweetgum forest from 1949 to today: a shrinking in numbers, and the value of what is left.
Watch →
Two turtles, two shores
A sea turtle thriving on the beach, a Nile turtle with no nests left by the lake.
Watch →More than a signature
What fills these cases is not a budget line but the material in your hands. These six routes are the real ways to close the gap.
Tell a story
A tale, a mani verse, a children's game, a recipe; what you remember of weir fishing, distilling, boats or old Köyceğiz — all of it becomes the first piece of the oral history archive. The recording is filed under your name and a copy goes to your family.
Give a photo or document
A frame from a family album, a deed, a letter. We scan at high resolution; the original stays with you.
Offer expertise
Botany, archaeology, archiving, law, architecture, museum practice. The scientific advisory board will be formed from this pool.
Buy a brick
Fundraising opens only once a formal legal body exists. When it does, the unit stays the same: one person, one brick.
Not open yetVolunteer
Field trips, album scanning days, transcribing interviews, translation. A single day of work counts.
Share
The counter moves for one reason only: someone shows this page to someone who knows Köyceğiz.
Photograph: A botanist collecting a specimen in the field · Idaho, USA — not Köyceğiz · BLMIdaho, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Photograph: Dalyan, 1998 · Dalyan, Köyceğiz — 1998 · Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The Köyceğiz Photo Archive
A museum building takes years; an archive can start today.
We are building the photographic archive of Köyceğiz together — not nature alone, but nature and people: faces that are gone, shops that have closed, a shoreline that has changed. Whether your frame was taken yesterday or fifty years ago, it enters the archive with its credit line and becomes part of the first collections when the museum is founded. This call is made in the name of the Köyceğiz Heritage Museum initiative.
The full call →
An ecosystem whose loss is documented, and a body of knowledge held only in living memory — the work of this museum is to make them visible before they are gone.