Turkey introduces historic civilization to international media

Turkey hosted foreign journalists at Mountainous Phrygia at a four-day event to introduce them to a new tourist destination.

Listed in UNESCO's tentative world heritage, the site covers 506 kilometers from Ankara's Gordion through Eskişehir, Kütahya, and Afyonkarahisar provinces.

According to ministerial sources, the incentive was started by Phrygia Cultural Heritages Protection Association (FRIGKUM). Journalists from Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Germany, and China were hosted on the site for four days starting from July 24.

The 3,000-year-old site is named "the second Cappadocia" due to its landscape.

According to UNESCO, Phrygia is a civilization which existed in the eighth century and dominated central Anatolia from the Mediterranean Sea at the south and Black Sea at north.

"Along the deep valleys in the region, castles, mounds, tumulus, necropolises, rock-cut worship places, inscriptions and reliefs, altars, cisterns, monumental rock-cut tombs, and niches have been found as testimonies of Phrygian culture," UNESCO said stressing that other exhibits also justified the worthiness of the place.

"Further, in the mounds on fertile plains, layers of the Phrygian settlement were discovered," it added.

There is also a 506 kilometer-long walking and cycling road (Phrygian Road) on the site which was constructed without harming the historical milieu.