HISTORY The Sabiha Gokcen International airport has been in operation over on my side of town since 2003. It is named after Sabiha Gokçen, one of the adopted daughters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic. Gokcen is famous in her own right because she was the first ever female combat…
On the 4th of January 2021 a new tramway line that runs the length of the Golden Horn opened. In Turkish Golden Horn translates as Haliç, meaning mouth or inlet. It’s named for the horn-like shape of this estuary which stretches approximately seven kilometres from the point where the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus…
The Istanbul Metro system in Turkey only dates back to 1989 but Istanbul’s had a state of the art transport system since 1875, when Tünel, the second ever subway in the world, opened. On a normal day a total of 1,600,000 people a day use the Istanbul metro and rail systems (this includes the Metrobus…
Anyone who’s spent any time in Turkey is likely to have caught a long distance bus. And if you’ve only ever had to use the Esenler bus station in Istanbul you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s chaotic. Compared to what came before, it’s a oasis of calm. Here’s what I experienced the first time I…
Behind the mundane route of the Istanbul Metrobus system lies another world. Find out more in this extract from my story “Metrobus Dreams”. “At Uzunçayır, I envisage the long fields to which the name refers. Fully grown sheep and brilliantly white newborn lambs dot meadows covered with long blades of grass swaying gently in the…