There is life here! When Afyonkarahisar is mentioned, the first things that come to mind are clotted cream or sausage. However, it has pastures, clean air, nature that looks like an open-air museum, rich history, marble, castle, mineral soda, clotted cream, sour cherry bread and of course, life-giving thermal springs. So there is life here!
Afyonkarahisar is naturally turbulent. Finally, if you take a look at Afyonkarahisar, which produced a President, there is nothing! If you don’t mind, let me count. The first thing that comes to mind is sausage. Because there is plenty of pasture around, the air is clean, the meat is delicious, and so are the sausages. They know the job. Nature around the city is like an open-air museum… There are also marble quarries. Marbles with incredible colors and beautiful veins have been cut into slices and are getting ready to decorate expensive bathrooms.
What about the opium flowers… He has the cream, he has the felt, he has the cherry bread kadayif. It has a castle on the hill, mineral soda, thermal springs… Afyonkarahisar houses, Ulu mosque, museum, victory monument, Turkish delight… The great leader Atatürk worked in Şuhut and Bolvodin districts of Afyonkarahisar and gave the order to move in the Commander-in-Chief National Park at the place known today as the Antalya junction: “Armies, your first target is the Mediterranean” he said.
As if all this were not enough, there are fairy chimneys, caves, rock mass shapes and mind-blowing formations here too. Why is Ürgüp not known like Göreme? Because it is unknown, because the road is bad, not every car can go. 4×4 road.
Üçler rock, a little further from Aslanlıkaya, Aslantaş and İhsaniye, is astonishing. I was wondering why I didn’t come before, shame on me. There are young people in the village and when they see tourists in the café, they say, “Shall we take them for a tour?” they ask. We set off under the guidance of Orhan Tepe. He is so used to it that when he sees the rocks he says, “We have a lot of them here…” However, I have been traveling from mountain to hill and inventorying Turkey’s interesting rock structures for years.
I set off thinking that we would visit Ayazini village later, the first target would be Gazlıgöl thermal spring. A person who made a vow to have a child sacrificed himself when he had a child. They say that there are many people who throw away their crutches and walk, who shed their skin like a snake and return with clear skin. There is a fountain in the middle of the village. One fountain flows cold, the other flows hot, its water is drinkable. Think of the heat of Kızılay soda as we know it is good for kidney stones.
Especially those who come to have the stones broken down with ray therapy benefit from it. There are various pools around, a restaurant, Ali Baba’s modest restaurant, and a pita restaurant. I settled in the hotel. They say you can’t enter the pool on a full stomach. I ate a shepherd’s salad and yoghurt and threw myself into the water. It instantly took away the fatigue of driving all day long. The circulation of ionized and mineral hot water heated from the magma revitalized the metabolism. There is life in this water!
History
According to legend, after all the begging and pleading of King Midas, he had a daughter. However, when she was a young girl, her whole body was covered with wounds, and because of the disease that no doctor could cure, she could not stand the pain and suffering, so she hit the roads and wandered around the mountains. King Midas sent watchmen to watch over his only daughter.
The young girl, who stopped to drink water in the green area where Gazlıgöl is now located within the borders of Afyonkarahisar province, ran regardless of the swamp due to the heat of the summer months. He drank the water to his heart’s content and threw himself into the muddy water. His pains eased and he fell asleep right there, exhausted from the days. When he woke up, he noticed that his aches and pains were gone. He stayed near that water for a week and recovered and returned to the palace.
King Midas, who was worried about his daughter and mourned day and night, was very happy to see his daughter healed again and told her to tell the name of the doctor who healed her and that he would make him the chief physician. When the young girl said that it was the hot water, not the doctor, that healed her, King Midas ordered a bath to be built where the hot water was located.
It is stated that this hot spring has been used since the time of the Phrygians. Gazlıgöl hot spring water, whose chemical classification is made as bicarbonate, sodium, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide; There are ions and gases such as chloride, iodide, bromide, fluoride, sulfate, nitrate, nitrite, hydrophosphate, carbonate, bicarbonate and hydroarsenate. The temperature of the hot spring is 64 degrees.
Healing properties: Apart from drinking and bathing treatments in Gazlıgöl spa, breathing the moist and steamy air created in closed environments where water is present also has therapeutic properties. Thermal spring water, which is generally effective in rheumatic diseases, circulatory system syndromes, liver, gallbladder, stomach and intestinal pain, neuralgia, neuritis and saborrheic skin diseases, is beneficial when applied as a cure.
The spa has five public baths with pools. One has historical and healing drinking water, the other has special spring water as a skin bath. The remaining three baths have borehole water and drinkable healing water.
10 golden rules for benefiting from the spa: 1- A doctor’s check-up should be made before the spa treatment. 2- The spa cure should be at least 15, at most 20 baths. 3- Only one bath should be taken a day. 4- The temperature of the bath water should not exceed 37-38 degrees. 5- The duration of stay in the bath should not exceed 15 minutes. 6- After the bath, you should lie down and rest for 45 minutes. 7- You should not enter the bath on a full stomach and this is the most appropriate time. 8- During the spa cure, heavy, meaty, doughy and fatty foods should not be eaten.
You should eat plenty of fruits, fresh vegetables, grilled, boiled and low-fat foods. 9- Walking and exercising should be done outside the spa. 10- The best program should be to follow the doctor’s advice. Note: Those who come for health purposes are advised to keep the water on the body in order not to reduce the effect of the treatment. For this reason, it is recommended not to soap too much. B.C. Gazlıgöl thermal spring, which has been a settlement center for 5000 years from 3000 to today, dates back to 3000 BC. 7th and 6th
It was won during the Phrygian times in the centuries BC, when the daughter of the Phrygian king Midas, who had a skin disease, was cured. The natural rock formations in the areas where Ayazini, Bayramaliler, Demirli, Üçlerkayası villages and Döğer Municipality are located, 10 km east of the thermal spring, are astounding.
Aslankaya, Kapıkaya, Maltaş open-air rock temples, Aslantaş and Yılantaş rock tombs, with unprecedented Phrygian goddess figures on rock masses, attract attention.
Ayazini is a town located on both sides of the stream bed, 28 km away from Afyonkarahisar, 4 km east of the Eskişehir state highway. The geological structure of the region is tuff rocky. In other words, sandy, micaceous soil covered the land with surface erosion formed by volcanic lava. This natural belt, starting from Seydiler village and extending to Döğer subdistrict, is covered with Fairy Chimneys.
The historical accumulation from the Hittites to the present day can be seen in Ayazini village. In the religious center, which was called Metropolis (Big City) during the Roman and Byzantine periods, there are large churches, burial chambers and a castle carved into the rock formations. The best example of interconnected multi-storey rock-carved structures is the “Avdalaz Castle” located in the village of Ayazini.
Carved church: This large-scale carved church with a regular plan in the Ayazini style has 6 pillars that are bath type and have collapsed. Aside from the American archaeologists who drew up the plan of the arch-shaped church, visitors also visit the village frequently. Cross reliefs and inscriptions can be seen on the ceiling domes and arches, which appear pitch black due to the soot of torches used for illumination.
The sound acoustics of the church, which is only found in Konya, Mersin and Ayazini in the world, is simply magnificent. While the rock-carved burial chambers and rock masses in Ayazini village attract attention, Ayazini tourism festivals have been held on May 21st for the last 3 years and have attracted great attention.
