Yeşilyurt, Muğla

Yeşilyurt
Town
Yeşilyurt general view
Location of Yeşilyurt within Turkey.
Coordinates: 37°19′N 28°27′E / 37.317°N 28.450°E / 37.317; 28.450
Country	Turkey
Region	Aegean
Province	Muğla
Government
• Mayor	Mehmet Güven (Republican People's Party)
Population (2009)[1]
• Total	2,660
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal code	48x xx
Area code(s)	(0090)+ 252
Licence plate	48
Website	http://www.yesilyurtbelediyesi.com

Yeşilyurt is a small town in southwestern Turkey at a distance of 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) from the city of Muğla, center of Muğla Province.

It is accessed by a turnout at a short distance from Muğla-İzmir highway just before entering Muğla. The town is located along slopes in the southern end of a plain of the same name.

The township's official name was Pisiköy until 1961 and this name's short form Pisi is still commonly used to refer to the settlement and its plain across the region. As such, the town had retained its historical name until recently, the name change decided by the central government in Ankara being a matter of anecdotes among the inhabitants.

The historical name Pisye is pre-Greek and may be compared with other pis- names encountered across Anatolia such as Pisidai, Pisilis and Pisa. A number of Turkish sources associate it with the toponym "Pissuwa" reportedly mentioned in Luwian or Hittite sources.

Yeşilyurt plain is situated in one of the pot-shaped small plains surrounded by mountains as formed by depressions in the Neogene (the other similar formations in the immediate neighborhood are the Muğla, Gülağzı, Yerkesik, Akkaya, Yenice, Çamköy and Ula plains).

Among these, Yeşilyurt plain, as well as Çamköy and Ula plains, ceased to be fully hermetical in time, and with a smaller depression opening a passage in its north, Yeşilyurt plain acquired the characteristics of fluvio-karst formations, becoming the starting point of the Çineçay (Marsyas) that joins the Menderes river 100 kilometres (62 mi) farther north near Aydın.

Since, according to Greek mythology, Marsyas River stems from the blood of the satyre of the same name, punished by Apollo by being flayed and nailed to a tree for having a lost the music contest between the two, the satyre's final place of rest should be around Yeşilyurt.