Weather in Turkey

Turkey's climate is going as crazy as everybody else's but it's still fairly reliable. The last couple of springs have been much wetter than usual, in Anatolia anyway, but on the whole you can pretty much guarantee blue skies, sunshine and warm water on the South Coast in the summer. The coastal areas in general have mild winters and good summers, the southern coast hitting the high 30's in June and hanging around in a holiday mood until well into the autumn. The Black Sea coast follows along about 10 degrees behind. Inland it's a different story with the Anatolian plateau suffering extremes of heat and cold related to it's altitude and the surrounding topography.

This winter we've started to see some particularly heavy rain on the south coast and subsequent flooding has made the news. I guess this is just part of that global climate change that we haven't talked about much for a while. In case you're not sure what the difference between climate and weather is...

The climate is the atmospheric conditions that we expect and the weather is what we get.

Istanbul is part of Europe and the weather reflects that. You'll find a wet cold winter slowly turning into a damp warm spring and a mild summer that doesn't hang around any longer than it feels is necessary. It's not such a major problem here as there's loads to do and see and if you're after beaches and swimming you'll quickly move on to somewhere else. That said you can be surprised by gorgeous spring days in the winter and 'sometimes it snows in April'.

The coasts of the Marmara and Aegean gradually warm up as you head south. By the time you get round the corner to Izmir the sun begins to blaze and air conditioning engineers start to proliferate. Bodrum, Marmaris and Fethiye are green and sunny. There's a fair amount of water coming down from the mountains for most of the year and this region is many peoples favourite part of the country (including a lot of Turks).

From Antalya east to Adana and the Hatay it just keeps getting warmer. You can comfortably swim in the Eastern Mediterranean in October and if you want to bake this is the place to be.

Cappadocia shares the climate of much of inland Turkey. Summers can be scary in their intensity and your altitude is directly proportional to the amount of snow you get in the winter. Luckily enough it's a fun place to be anyway so as long as there are places to eat and sleep functioning you'll be fine.

The East is harsh, no other word really, bitter in the winter and debilitatingly hot in the summer months. Spring's a good time to go but that's also the time of the most intense military activity, no surprise really.

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