A remote Turkish village where more than half the population are deaf and non-verbal has left doctors and scientists baffled.
Isolated Gokova – which is located 450 miles from Istanbul and has a small population of 120 – has such profound disability problems that sign language has become the primary means of communication, Turkish newspaper Hürriyet reports.
Local mayor Eyup Tozn said: ‘We’ve learned to rely on sign language as a community but any outsiders have trouble communicating.
‘There are almost no healthy people’, he said.
Causes for the condition that has affected several families are not known, but some have blamed the high deafness rate on inbreeding in an area where newcomers are a rarity.
But others say locals have been slowly poisoned by generations of water pollution, with metals like iron and arsenic and chemical contamination from industrial waste having been linked to deafness.
‘I think this is not caused by inter-marriage, but because of unhealthy water sources’, mayor Tozn added.
Villager Sati Tozun added: ‘I have four children with disabilities and one of them has three children, all deaf and mute.
Most of the 120 residents living in the Turkish village of Gokova are deaf or mute, meaning that locals have resorted to sign language as their man form of communication
Picture shows the village in Turkey where the vast majority of the population are deaf and mute
Reasons for the widespread deafness are unknown, but some believe it could be linked to a high rate of inbreeding in the local area
‘My sister-in-law has children with disabilities. This village is completely disabled.’
And neighbour Ali Tuzun, who has no hearing loss, added: ‘Most of this community is disabled. It’s hard for them to get along.
‘They get help from the government, but they’re not showing the problem enough interest.’
Another local, Rahmi Cizin, noted how villagers ‘don’t have access to clean water’, adding that ‘the rate of disability here is very high. All of them need care.’
Glokova is a picturesque village with stunning turquoise waters and rolling mountains,
The mystery surrounding the high deafness rate in the Turkish village comes more than 10 years after Australian authorities uncovered a hidden community where children born from generations of incest lived with physical deformities.
Incapable of intelligible speech, some of the children had oddly-formed features as the result of being born to parents who were themselves related.
The discovery was made in 2012, when officials raided a ‘bush camp’ in the hillside valley.
Others believe the high number of people with disabilities comes from contaminated water
In this family of 40, brothers and sisters slept with one another, as did aunts, uncles, fathers and daughters — the tragic result being more physically or psychologically damaged children coming into the world.
Had the camp south west of Sydney not been raided by police and child protection officers it is likely that those newly born damaged children would themselves have gone on to have sex with one another and start a new generation of misfits.
