Özkonak Yeraltı Şehri

Coming here was one of the most amazing and trans-​formative experiences of my life. Of course I took a tour — it is really the only way to go. After all — what the heck do I know about underground cities in Mesopotamia.
What I didn’t know was just how tight it would be. Sure there were some chambers at the beginning that were large enough to breathe in, but as we went deeper (this place goes 9 stories down), the rooms grew smaller and the tunnels to get to them more and more narrow, until we were on our knees in a row, crawling through a stone tube 400 feet underground from chamber to chamber. If even one person in front of us had had a panic attack, we would all have been doomed.
This terror alone made it worth while. I have never lived so close to the edge in my life.

«Deep Underground City»
The city is full of narrow stone tunnels and steps that go down. It has a long history, apparently going back 4,000 years, includes some period where it was used by Christians.
If you’re claustrophobic, have breathing difficulties, or have related allergies then you won’t be able to make it here. Also, if you’re tall or heavy-​set then you’ll have a harder time navigating through the narrow tunnels. There were several steep climbs upwards and downwards and we ran out of breath pretty fast.
Our guide told us that the city ran 80 meters deep, but you’ll only be able to get as far down as 50 meters. We were also informed that only 10% of the city was open to the public. 90% has not been excavated yet.
The rooms are more areas carved out of stone. In the city, you’ll see rooms, a school, a cross-​shaped church, kitchens, secret doors, living quarters of monastery students, and the main air shaft of the city, amongst others.
There is a decent bazaar outside and has the usual vendors.

Ozkonak Underground City was one of my favorite sites on my tour of Turkey, its small, really small, but really cool. Its an underground city that housed hundreds (maybe thousands?) of turks when they had to hide from invaders. What blew my mind was that it went down a few levels all carved out of the stone. I think we only went down 2 or 3 levels but its said that it goes down 5 to 7 levels underground! That was just amazing to me.
Whats also cool was the doors they made to keep the invaders out, it was basically a wheel carved out of stone and all they did was roll it across the opening from the inside. Genius! Not all of the paths were open, some were caved in or blocked off, but the ones that you could go to were narrow and were only one person wide. So if you’re claustrophobic, skip this one, trust me! With people going in and out, the paths from room to room got backed up and someone had to back up to allow people to get either in or out. I made it to the end, as deep as i could go inside this underground shelter i think i passed three wheel doors. Its short but really cool.
Whats even cooler is the guy who runs the tourist shop at the site, is the man who found the site in 1973 (if i remember what the tour guide said correctly.) He was a farmer and when he was clearing his land to remove the rocks and stones from the field he came across this underground city. They of course made it into a historical sight and now he runs this shop on the site. I got to take a picture with him, you can also buy a book about the underground city and he’ll sign the picture of him inside the book too.
Looking online, there are other larger underground cities, unfortunately our tour did not take us there, but for 8TL it was really cool.