About Spelunking, Turkey

With an approximate number of 40.000 caves and caverns present, our country is like a ’ paradise of caverns ’ when compared to other countries. An important geologic - geomorphologic fact in the formation of caverns is karstification (karstic fields) and this karstification is present in Western and Central Taurus Mountains (Muğla, Antalya, Isparta, Burdur, Konya, Karaman, İçel and Adana) of our country. The longest (Pınarözü Cavern, 16 km west of Beyşehir Lake) and the deepest (Çukurpınar Sinkhole, 1880 meters at the south of Anamur) caves of Turkey are present on this mountain belt.

In our country, the cavern investigations initiated by the Cavern Research Society (MAD) founded in 1964. Later on, the first university club, Bosphorus University Cavern Research Club (BÜMAK) has been founded in 1973. In 1979, Karst and Cavern Exploration Unit founded under the authority of MTA Geology Studies Department is executing most of the cavern explorations nowadays.

The exact number of caves investigated and documented by all local and foreign cave explorers is 800 so far.