Samsun, Turkey — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Samsun known for?

It is the busiest port on the Black Sea coast, and it is where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stepped ashore on 19 May 1919 to launch the Turkish War of Independence, an event every Turkish schoolchild learns by date. The steamer that carried him, the Bandırma, is preserved as a museum ship near the seafront. Beyond that history, the province grows the tobacco and hazelnuts of the Bafra and Çarşamba plains, and hides the ancient Greek city of Amisos beneath its modern streets.

Where is Samsun?

Samsun sits at the middle of Turkey's Black Sea coast, on a shelf of flat land where two great rivers reach the sea. To the west the Kızılırmak, the Red River of antiquity, spills into a broad delta of lagoons and reed beds before it reaches the Black Sea. Those lagoons form one of the largest coastal wetlands on the whole shore, alive with migrating birds.

To the east the Yeşilırmak builds the wide Çarşamba Plain before the sea. Between the two deltas lie the province's farm belts, the Bafra Plain on the Kızılırmak and the Çarşamba Plain on the Yeşilırmak, among the most fertile ground in Anatolia. The land does not stay flat for long.

Behind the coastal strip the Canik hills rise in green, forested ridges, part of the Pontic chain that walls off the interior. The city itself hugs the shore below. Rivers, not roads, drew the first shape of this place.

Their silt made the plains, their mouths made the harbours, and their valleys still carry the routes inland toward Amasya and the heartland. Sinop lies up the coast to the west, Ordu down the coast to the east, and the Black Sea fills the whole northern horizon.

What is Samsun like?

Samsun wears its part in the founding of the Turkish Republic openly. The date of Atatürk's landing, 19 May, is the city's signature, stamped on its main boulevard, its stadium and the university that carries the name Ondokuz Mayıs, Turkish for the nineteenth of May. Statues and memorials mark the spot where he came ashore.

Civic pride here is bound up with that story. Beyond the politics, the province keeps the broader culture of the Black Sea shore. Local music leans on the kemençe, the small upright fiddle of the region, and the fast horon danced in linked rows at weddings.

The kitchen turns on the sea and the plains around it. Hamsi, the Black Sea anchovy, appears fried, in rice and even in cornbread, while the hazelnuts of the surrounding hills sweeten pastries and fill village markets. Tea is poured all day, as it is along the whole coast.

Older layers show through as well. The plains east of the city, around the Terme river, carry the old Greek legend of the Amazons, whom antiquity placed on this shore. Faith, farming and the sea braid together in the festivals that fill the province's calendar, from spring commemorations to summer harvests.

What is the history of Samsun?

The city began as Amisos, a colony planted by Greek settlers from Miletos in the sixth century BC. Under Mithridates VI it grew into a leading port of the kingdom of Pontus, and later passed to Rome and then to Byzantium. Seljuk Turks took the town in the twelfth century and gave it the name Samsun.

Its modern fame came much later. On 19 May 1919 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed here and set the Turkish War of Independence in motion, the campaign that ended in the founding of the Republic in 1923.

What is the climate of Samsun?

Samsun has the mild, damp climate of the Black Sea coast. Summers are warm and humid, winters cool and wet, and rain falls in every season rather than one. The sea keeps the air moist and the temperatures even through the year, so hard frost and real summer heat both stay rare down on the shore.

Compared with the eastern Black Sea, though, Samsun sits in a drier pocket, sheltered a little by the way the coast turns. The Canik hills catch the rain inland.

How do you get to Samsun?

For most travellers, the flight in is the simplest route to Samsun. Its airport lies out on the Çarşamba Plain, east of the city near the Yeşilırmak, with links to the main Turkish hubs. By land the coast road hugs the Black Sea, running west toward Sinop and east toward Ordu and Trabzon, while another route climbs inland to Amasya and the plateau.

The port still works the sea. Buses fan out across the province from the city terminal. A tramway threads the shore from the centre out to the beaches at Atakum.