Yeşilyurt is a small town in southwestern Turkey at a distance of 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. Etymology 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. Geography 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 farther north near Aydın. Since, according to Greek mythology, Marsyas River stems from the blood of the satyr 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 satyr's final place of rest should be around Yeşilyurt. Until the recent building of highways, contacts between the several plains of the inner Muğla region with either the coastal regions, or with the inland centers (through one of the three difficult passes; to the northwest to Milas, to the north to the Menderes plain through Gökbel valley following Çineçay, or to the northeast to Tavas) were quite arduous, and the region as a whole always tended to develop its peculiarities. Features Yeşilyurt is known for its hand-made textile products woven in silk or cotton. These traditional activities have been re-organized in the framework of a cooperative project in the 1990s