Mahmutlar

What Mahmutlar actually is

Mahmutlar is a dense residential town about ten to twelve kilometres east of Alanya's castle rock, wedged between the D400 coast road and a steep hillside of banana terraces. Twenty years ago it was a farming village. Today it is a grid of apartment towers, supermarkets, pharmacies, dental clinics, estate agents and cafés, with a population that swells and shrinks with the seasons and includes several thousand foreign residents.

It is important to say clearly what this place is not. Mahmutlar is not a resort strip of landscaped five-star hotels with private beaches. It has no golf, no marina, no pine forest and no famous bay. What it has instead is the cheapest bed on the Turkish Mediterranean, a genuine town that functions all year, and a way of staying that suits a month better than it suits five nights.

If you have come to this page because someone told you Mahmutlar was cheap, they were right, and the reasons are worth understanding rather than guessing at. The building boom left a very large stock of apartments, many of them let out through management companies as apart-hotels. Supply outruns demand outside July and August. The beach is not the region's best, so the big charter operators never priced it as a beach resort. And it sits on the far side of Alanya from Antalya Airport, which pushes the transfer past two hours.

The airport question, which is the practical point

This is the single most useful thing on the page, so it comes early. Mahmutlar's nearest airport is Gazipaşa-Alanya (GZP), roughly half an hour east along the coast. Antalya Airport (AYT) is on the other side of Alanya and the transfer runs well over two hours, around two and a quarter in normal traffic and longer on an August afternoon.

That gap changes how you should shop for flights. For most Turkish coastal destinations the advice is simple: fly to Antalya, because the route network is enormous and the fares are lower. For Mahmutlar the calculation is genuinely open. A Gazipaşa flight that costs somewhat more can still be the better buy once you weigh two and a quarter hours in a vehicle against thirty minutes, particularly with children, elderly parents or a late-night landing. Gazipaşa is small, its network is a fraction of Antalya's and it is heavily seasonal, so it is not always an option; when it is, take the comparison seriously.

Transfers inside Turkey we operate ourselves, with our own vehicles and our own drivers, and have done since 2016. We run both routes. On the long Antalya run the practical details matter: the price is agreed per vehicle rather than per person, the driver waits inside the arrivals hall with a name board, your flight is tracked so a delay does not lose you the car, there is a comfort stop roughly halfway if you want one, and child seats can be requested in advance. On the short Gazipaşa run it is a straightforward half-hour along the coast.

The beach, honestly

Mahmutlar's shoreline is the weakest part of the offer and you should know that before you commit. It is narrow. In several sections it is flat rock shelf rather than sand, with concrete terraces and metal ladders built out over the water, which is how a lot of the town actually swims. Between those you get stretches of coarse sand and pebble, and a longer municipal beach section with sunbeds and showers.

The water itself is clean, clear and cold enough to be refreshing in August, and it deepens quickly a few metres out. For an adult who wants to swim properly this is good. For a toddler who wants to sit in ankle-deep water it is poor, and İncekum on the far side of Alanya is a completely different proposition.

A useful local habit: many long-stayers do not use the Mahmutlar shoreline every day at all. They take the dolmuş fifteen minutes into Alanya for Keykubat Beach, or west for the sand, and treat their own seafront as a place to walk in the evening. That is a reasonable plan, and it is much easier when you are here for weeks rather than days.

Where to stay

The seafront row along the D400

Blocks with sea-view balconies directly above the coast road. Best views, closest to the water, and you hear traffic. Ask which floor and which side, because the difference between a fourth-floor sea view and a first-floor road view here is large.

The town centre and the main shopping street

One or two streets inland, in the middle of the shops, bakeries, pharmacies and cafés. Less view, more convenience, and the market and the supermarkets are on your doorstep. For a long stay this is often the better trade.

Up the hill

The slope behind the town is stacked with newer complexes, many with big pools and wide sea views. Cheaper per week, quieter, and you are walking uphill on the way home or paying for taxis. Fine with a car or with a hotel shuttle, tiring without either.

Towards Kargıcak and the east

Beyond Mahmutlar the coast opens up and the complexes get larger and further apart, with more five-star and residence-style property. Quieter and greener, further from the market and the shops.

Towards Oba and Alanya

West of Mahmutlar the density continues towards the city. Slightly more expensive, closer to Alanya's restaurants and the castle, and still much cheaper than the western resort belt.

Hotel stock and what a budget really buys

This is where Mahmutlar differs from every other destination on this coast. The dominant type is not a classic all-inclusive resort but an apartment-style hotel: a studio or one-bedroom flat with a kitchenette, a washing machine, a balcony and access to a shared pool, let by the week or the month with cleaning and linen included. Classic hotels with buffet restaurants exist too, mostly three and four-star, and a few larger properties on the eastern edge offer all-inclusive board, but they are the minority rather than the rule.

The indicative anchor here is around 35 EUR per person per night, the lowest of any destination we cover on this coast. Read it as a shoulder-season figure for two adults sharing in a decent apartment-style property or a modest hotel on room-only or bed-and-breakfast terms. In July and August it rises, though less steeply than in the resort belt, because the stock is so deep. Book by the month rather than by the week and the per-night figure drops again, sometimes sharply, especially between November and March.

What that money does not buy is landscaping, buffet variety and beach quality. The pools are functional, the gardens are small, and the sea in front of you is not the reason people come. What it does buy is space, a kitchen, a washing machine, and the ability to live at Turkish prices rather than at resort prices, because the supermarkets and the market are aimed at residents.

The Saturday market, and shopping generally

The Saturday street market is a genuine event, one of the largest weekly markets in the Alanya area, and people drive in from the city for it. Several streets fill with fruit and vegetables, cheese, olives, honey, spices, nuts, textiles, shoes and household goods. Prices are a fraction of the tourist shops, and by the last hour the produce sellers discount hard to avoid carrying stock home.

Around it, the town runs on ordinary Turkish retail: the big national supermarket chains, discount grocers, butchers, bakeries, a fishmonger or two, hardware shops and enough pharmacies to be surprising. For a long stay, this ecosystem is the entire economic argument for Mahmutlar. A month here costs less than a fortnight almost anywhere else on the coast, and most of that saving comes from cooking two meals a day out of a market bag.

The resident foreign community

Mahmutlar has one of the largest concentrations of foreign residents in Turkey, built up over two decades of apartment sales. Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh speakers are the biggest group by some distance, with substantial Iranian, German, Scandinavian and British communities alongside them.

The practical effects are real. Menus, estate agent windows and clinic signs are routinely in three or four languages. There are dentists, opticians and GPs used to foreign patients and to explaining prices in advance. There are hairdressers, gyms, language exchanges, church and community groups, and shops that sell the food people grew up with. If you are considering a winter of two or three months and you do not speak Turkish, this makes Mahmutlar far easier than a village of the same size elsewhere.

The other side of it is that Mahmutlar can feel less Turkish than its neighbours. If your reason for coming to Turkey is immersion, you will find more of it in Alanya's back streets or in a mountain village than on the main street here.

When to go

April. Around 22 to 24 degrees, sea near 19. Good for walking and the mountain valleys, marginal for swimming, and the cheapest month of the spring.

May. Upper twenties, sea comfortable from mid-month. Excellent value.

June. Low thirties, warm sea, the town busy but not overwhelmed.

July and August. Mid to high thirties with humidity, the concrete holds the heat, and the coast road is slow. Prices rise but stay below the western resorts. The hillside blocks catch a breeze that the seafront does not.

September. Around thirty degrees, the sea at its warmest, the crowd thinning. The best month of the year here.

October. High twenties into mid-month, still swimmable, prices falling sharply.

November to March. This is Mahmutlar's second season and its real distinction. Unlike the resort belts west of Alanya, the town does not close: daytime temperatures sit in the mid to high teens, most shops and restaurants stay open, and a long-stay population of northern European and Russian-speaking winterers arrives for two to five months at a time. Expect rain, cool evenings, no beach weather and the lowest accommodation prices you will see anywhere on this coast.

Food, evenings and getting around

Eating out in Mahmutlar is cheap and unpretentious: lokantas serving stews and grills by the portion, pide and kebab houses, fish restaurants near the water, plus a scattering of Russian, Georgian, Iranian and northern European places serving the resident community. There is a modest bar scene along the seafront and the main street, but nothing resembling Alanya's nightlife, and things wind down early.

Dolmuş minibuses run along the D400 constantly. Alanya centre is around fifteen to twenty minutes west for small change, and that is where you go for the castle, the bazaar, the cable car, the big shopping centres and any evening that needs choice. Taxis are cheap and easy for the return trip.

Inland, the Dim Çayı valley is twenty minutes away, with restaurants on platforms over water cold enough to hurt your hands, and the Dim cave above it. Sapadere Canyon is a longer drive up the same mountain road. These are the two excursions that long-stayers repeat.

Who Mahmutlar suits, and who should skip it

It suits you if you are staying three weeks or more, want a kitchen and a washing machine, care more about the monthly cost than about the beach, and would rather live in a town with real shops than in a hotel compound. It suits winterers, remote workers on a long visit, retired couples escaping northern weather, and families who want space rather than animation.

Skip it if you are coming for a week of classic all-inclusive with slides, a big garden and a wide sandy beach — that is Konaklı, İncekum or Belek, not here. Skip it if you have a toddler who needs shallow water. Skip it if a two-and-a-quarter-hour transfer from Antalya sounds intolerable and no Gazipaşa flight exists on your dates. Skip it if you want quiet countryside, because Mahmutlar is dense, built-up and still being built. And skip it if the point of the trip is nightlife, because that is fifteen minutes west in Alanya.

Getting a price

Send us your dates, the number of adults and children, whether you want a hotel room or an apartment with a kitchen, the board basis and roughly what you plan to spend. Tell us if you are considering a month or longer, because the pricing works differently and it is worth asking for both. A consultant prices it with our partner agencies, who issue the booking and the voucher, then comes back with options that genuinely fit, including which are close to the market and which are up the hill. The quote is free, no payment is taken on this website, and we normally reply within one working day.