İğneada & Floodplain Forests

Can a forest live in water? Before coming to İğneada, most of us would answer “no”. Yet here, for part of the year, the trees stand with their roots drowned in water, then step back onto dry land when the waters recede. These forests are called longoz: floodplain forests… And finding one in Turkey this extensive and this well preserved is no easy matter. It is as if the forest has never quite decided which side to take in the endless bargaining between sea and land.