Türkiye Geography & Climate

Turkey covers about 783,000 square kilometres across two continents, with the small European portion of Thrace separated from Anatolia by the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles — a strategic waterway it has controlled for five hundred years.

The Anatolian plateau

The interior is a high plateau between eight hundred and twelve hundred metres, dry, treeless and continental, ringed by mountains that keep the sea air out. Lake Van in the east is the largest lake in the country and strongly alkaline; Lake Tuz in the centre is a salt flat for much of the year.

Mountains

The Pontic range runs along the Black Sea coast and the Taurus along the Mediterranean, meeting in the east where the land rises to Mount Ararat at 5,137 metres, the highest point in the country and a dormant volcano.

Four coasts

The Black Sea coast is wet, green and steep, with tea and hazelnut terraces. The Marmara is the industrial heart. The Aegean is indented with bays and islands and holds most of the classical sites. The Mediterranean, the Turquoise Coast, has the clearest water and the Taurus rising directly behind it.

Cappadocia

Volcanic ash from Erciyes and Hasan Dağı laid down soft tuff, which erosion has carved into pinnacles and valleys. Because the rock is soft enough to cut with hand tools and hardens on exposure, people have been carving houses, churches and whole underground cities into it for two thousand years.

Earthquakes

The North Anatolian Fault runs across the country from east to west and is among the most active on earth. The 1999 İzmit and 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes were both catastrophic; the latter killed more than fifty thousand people.

Turkey has several distinct climates, and the difference between them is large enough that packing for one region tells you little about another.

The Mediterranean and Aegean coasts

Hot dry summers above 35°C and mild wet winters around 10 to 15°C. The sea is swimmable from May to late October. This is the climate most visitors picture.

The Black Sea coast

The wettest part of the country by a wide margin — Rize receives well over two metres a year — with rain in every month, mild winters and humid summers. It is green, forested and grows tea, which nowhere else in Turkey can.

The central plateau

Continental and semi-arid: hot dry summers, cold winters with snow, and a very wide daily range. Ankara and Cappadocia regularly drop below freezing between December and February, and Cappadocia under snow is one of the sights of the country.

The east

Harsh. Eastern Anatolia has long, severe winters — Kars and Erzurum fall below −20°C and are snowbound for months — and short warm summers. The south-east around Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır is the opposite in summer, exceeding 45°C.

Istanbul

Transitional between Mediterranean and Black Sea: humid summers around 28°C, cool damp winters with occasional snow, and the lodos and poyraz winds off the Bosphorus that change the weather within hours.

When to swim, by coast

The Mediterranean around Antalya is comfortable from May into November and is the longest swimming season in the country. The Aegean warms a few weeks later and cools a few weeks earlier. The Black Sea rarely exceeds 24°C even in August and the Sea of Marmara sits between the two. It is the single most useful piece of practical climate knowledge for planning a coastal trip here.

Water

Turkey is increasingly water-stressed, with drought affecting the Aegean and the central plateau and reservoirs falling in recent years.