“With a Mansion”
Old name: Misthi/Misti (Greek), Misly
Market day: Sunday
Favourite son: St Demetrios
The small settlement of Konaklı, south of Derinkuyu off the road to Niğde, is a grim and dust-blown sort of place that nevertheless advertises itself as the homeland of potatoes and wheat. Despite its pretty name there’s not much reason to stop here unless you are particularly interested in the churches that were built in large numbers in 19th-century Cappadocia after the law was changed to permit non-Muslims to construct new places of worship.
If you are interested then it’s particularly worth coming here to see the large and imposing Church of St Basil, the roofline of which is studded with mini-domes while the facade is decorated with tiny carvings of cherubim and the double-headed eagle of Byzantium. The church was being restored when I visited in May 2014. Hopefully the work is finished now.
The church stands in a strange landscape that looks as if some large burrowing animal has been hard at work digging it all up. Actually, the assorted holes, caverns and underground stores are used to keep the potatoes cool as they are around Şahinefendi.
Signs suggest that there is an underground city here. If so, there is no obvious trace of it and the bus driver emphatically denied its existence.
The original inhabitants of Konaklı were almost all Greeks who spoke a dialect known as Misthiotica. It was largely derived from Byzantine Greek with many Turkish loan words. The Misthi Greeks were almost the last to leave Turkey following he population exchange enforced by the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne; roughly 4,400 of them set off from the small town for Greece on 24-5 June 1924.
St Demetrius It is believed that St Demetrius was born in what was them Misti. Icons show him as an elderly man in Cappadocian dress – it seems likely that he was a local farmer. However it wasn’t until the late 19th century that he supposedly appeared in a dream to a local woman, claiming that his body was incorrupt and should be exhumed from a local catacomb. Once this happened, pilgrims started to travel to the village in the hope of healing, etc. When the villagers left Misti in 1924 they took the bones of the saint with them to Alexandropolis in Greece where they are now in the Church of the Transfiguration. (This Demetrius should probably not be confused with the warrior saint often depicted in the cave churches of Cappadocia although aspects of his cult may have blended into those of the better-known Demetrius – and behind both stories may lie links to the ancient cult of the agricultural goddess Demeter.)
Transport info
There is a timetabled bus service from Niğde‘s old bus station to Konaklı. In the week there are buses roughly every hour and a half but at weekends they’re far less frequent.
