About This Project
"A personal, non-commercial archive of Turkey's most remarkable travel routes."
81
provinces explored
340+
route days logged
17
years on the road
Growing Up Between Coasts,
Learning to Read the Land
I was born in Mersin, on Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast, to a family that moved often. My father worked in civil engineering, which meant that before I finished school I had lived in Adana, Sivas, and briefly in Trabzon — each city a different climate, a different dialect, a different relationship to the land. That restlessness never left me. If anything, it deepened.
After completing my degree in geography at Ankara University in the early 2000s, I spent several years working for a regional development consultancy that took me through the Black Sea highlands, the volcanic plateaus of Central Anatolia, and the limestone karst valleys of the Taurus mountains. These weren't tourist routes. They were narrow farm roads, forestry tracks, and shepherd paths that barely appeared on printed maps. I drove them in rented Renaults and borrowed tractors. I slept in village guesthouses and municipal rest stops. I ate whatever was placed in front of me — and it was always extraordinary.
What struck me repeatedly was not how exotic these places felt, but how familiar they were — and yet how thoroughly unknown to most Turks themselves, let alone visitors. A walnut forest outside Kastamonu older than the Ottoman Empire. A Roman road still in daily use near Afyonkarahisar. A family-run olive press in the Aegean hills that had been operating since at least 1890. These things existed. They were right there. But nobody had written them down in any way that made them accessible, practical, and honest.
"Turkey is not one landscape — it is forty landscapes compressed into a single country. Every province has its own logic, its own rhythm. The only way to understand it is to drive slowly, stop often, and speak to people who have never left.
By 2010, I had accumulated dozens of handwritten notebooks, a battered collection of road atlases annotated in three different pen colors, and a growing conviction that I had something worth sharing. The travel writing that existed about Turkey at the time was either pitched at luxury tourists following well-worn Aegean circuits or at backpackers hunting for the cheapest hostel in Sultanahmet. Neither had much to say about the interior, the north, the east, or the thousands of roads in between.
I started writing route guides informally — first as documents I emailed to friends planning road trips, then as longer pieces posted on early blogging platforms. The response was immediate and unexpected. People were hungry for exactly this kind of grounded, route-specific, distance-aware information. Not vague inspiration, but actual directions. How long does it take to drive from Şanlıurfa to Mardin? Which village on the road to Doğubayazıt has a reliable petrol station? Where can you park safely near the Sumela Monastery trailhead? These were questions nobody was answering properly.
Over the following decade I refined the format through practice, reader feedback, and — above all — continued travel. I returned to routes I had driven years earlier to check whether conditions had changed. I drove new routes that readers suggested. I crossed the same mountain passes in spring and in autumn to understand how seasonality changes everything. By 2019, what had been a loose collection of notes had become a coherent methodology: routes described at road level, with timing that reflects real driving conditions, accommodation notes that prioritize family-run guesthouses over chains, and cultural context drawn from local sources rather than secondary literature.
This website is the organized, public expression of that methodology. It exists because Turkey's road network — one of the most dramatically diverse in the world — deserves documentation that matches its complexity. It is free to use, carries no advertising, and is not affiliated with any tourism board, hospitality group, or travel agency. Every route published here I have driven personally, usually more than once.
I live in Ankara now, but I am rarely there for long. There are still roads I haven't taken, valleys I haven't named, and villages where the tea will taste like nowhere else on earth. I intend to find all of them, and to write them down for anyone who wants to follow.
Mehmet Tuncay Akyüz
Traveller, geographer & route writer — Ankara, Turkey
Editorial Principles &
Non-Commercial Commitment
This project exists for one reason: to share genuinely useful, honest route knowledge about Turkey with fellow travellers. There is nothing to buy here, no agenda beyond the road itself, and no financial interest shaping what gets published.
This Website Is Entirely Non-Commercial
mehmet-tuncay-akyuz is a personal passion project. It sells no products or services, accepts no sponsorship, carries no advertising of any kind, and earns no revenue from affiliate programmes or referral schemes. Every route guide, every recommendation, and every observation published here is offered freely and without any commercial motive whatsoever.
If you encounter a link on this site that you believe may be affiliated or commercial in nature, please get in touch. Transparency is taken seriously here, and any oversight will be corrected immediately.
How Routes Are Researched & Verified
Every route begins with first-hand travel — on the ground, behind the wheel or on foot.
Road surface, fuel stops, seasonal access, signal coverage — all recorded in the field.
Official maps, local authority resources, and trusted contacts are consulted for accuracy.
Each guide carries a last-verified date and is revisited as conditions change.
Editorial Guidelines
What You Will Never Find Here
Discovering Turkey's Hidden Roads, One Route at a Time. Handcrafted route guides through Anatolia's most remarkable landscapes.
Contact
MEHMET TUNCAY AKYÜZ
55050 İlkadım/Samsun
Türkiye
Exploring Anatolia's roads from the Black Sea coast to the Mediterranean.
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