Akçay & Gulf of Edremit

“Even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees, / and not for your children, either…” says Nâzım Hikmet in his poem ‘On Living’. So what kind of faith is it to plant a tree knowing full well you may never sit in its shade? Look at the olive groves running down from the foothills of Kazdağı to the sea along the Gulf of Edremit, and you’ll see that this faith has lived in these lands for centuries… The mountain’s slopes descend to the gulf as if wearing a skirt of olives: the sea below, pine forests above, and in between that endless, silver-tinged green.