Free Republic

The tragic image of a drowned toddler whose body washed up on a beach in one of Turkey’s most popular resorts went viral Wednesday, underscoring the increasingly desperate plight of migrants trying to flee Africa and the Middle East in hopes of a better life in Europe. The boy, presumed to be from Syria, was found dead Wednesday near the town of Bodrum. A Turkish police officer is shown in the image carrying the boy's body away from the waves. At least 12 migrants, including the boy and four other children, drowned off the Turkish coast when two boats carrying...

The Uluburun II, which is on display in Bodrum and sponsored by the Bodrum Peninsula Promotion Foundation started to be built in 2004 using late Bronze Age techniques and was launched in 2005... The [original] Uluburun sank in the 14th century 8.5 kilometers southeast of Kafl in Uluburun Bay while carrying copper and tin from Alexandria to Crete. It was discovered in 1982 by a diver. The remains of the shipwreck were unearthed by an excavation team consisting of archaeologists and divers and the process has lasted over 20 years. Considered to be one of the most significant archaeological finds...

New artifacts have been found during excavations in Bodrum’s Ortakent and Gümüşlük neighborhoods. The artifacts will shed light on the history of Bodrum Peninsula, according to officials. The Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum Director Emel Özkan said that they had discovered 49 artifacts from the Mycenean era. “The number of Mycenean artifacts increased to 248 with these ones. This made our museum the richest one in terms of Mycenean artifacts among the Turkish museums,” she said. Özkan said that the artifacts, which date back to 3,500 years ago, were very important for Anatolian history, adding, “The amphora and gifts found in...

During excavations carried out by the Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum in the Aegean town of Bodrum’s Ortakent district, graves from the Mycenaean era have been unearthed. According to a written statement issued by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, pieces unearthed in the graves are very important for the scientific world. Among the pieces are baked earth, water bottles, cups with three handles, a carafe, a razor, animal bones and lots of glass and beads of various sizes. Examinations on nearly 3,500-year-old artifacts show that the graves date back to the Mycenaean III era around 600 B.C. to 1,000 B.C years...

Just off the west coast of the Bodrum peninsula, southwest of an island called Yassiada, there is a submerged reef appropriately referred to by some as The Ship Trap. About A.D. 626, in the reign of Emperor Heraclius, when the Persians and the Avars were laying siege to Constantinople, the capital of the East Roman Empire, the reef claimed another victim, a small ship bearing in its hold a cargo of nearly a thousand wine amphorae. For more than thirteen centuries the shipwreck lay on the seabed until it was discovered by Kemal Aras, a Turkish diver, who then showed...

The murky water in Dock No.1 in Cospicua has witnessed much history over the years. Nobody ever imagined, however, that lying underneath could be the remains of an ancient Turkish wonder - the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. No one, that is, but oncologist Stephen Brincat, who came across this precious piece of information while reading an article about the excavations of the site by the British in the 19th century in the Turkish magazine Cornucopia. "There was one sentence which said that the wall of the mausoleum was dismantled to build a dock in Malta," Dr Brincat said. Blocks of marble...