Turkey Weather Guide

The short version

Turkey is not one climate and the differences are large enough to change your luggage. The coast is Mediterranean, the interior is continental and high, the Black Sea shore is wet, and Istanbul sits between all of them.

The Aegean and Mediterranean coasts

Hot dry summers and mild wet winters. Antalya, Bodrum and the Ephesus hinterland behave the way Greece or southern Italy behave: the summer sun is strong, the shade is scarce at the ruins, and the sea stays warm well into October. Winter is mild, green and quiet, with real rain.

The Anatolian plateau

This is the one people are not ready for. Cappadocia sits high on the central plateau in a landscape made by extinct volcanoes, with Erciyes Dağ at 3916 m and Hasan Dağ at 3253 m closing the horizon. Altitude does what altitude does: hot days and genuinely cold nights in summer, freezing temperatures and snow in winter, and a wide swing between noon and dawn in every season.

A visitor who packs for the Mediterranean and then takes a dawn balloon flight over Göreme in October has made the classic error.

Istanbul

Its own thing: humid, changeable, warmed and cooled by two seas and the strait between them. Hot and sticky in midsummer, cold and damp in midwinter, and lovely in the shoulders. The wind off the Bosphorus can take several degrees off a pleasant afternoon, and it does this without warning.

The Black Sea coast

Green because it rains. This is the wettest part of the country, in every season, and it is a different Turkey entirely: tea terraces, cloud and forest rather than sun and stone.

What this means for a day

In the shoulder seasons a full day works everywhere. In July and August the archaeological sites have to be done before about ten in the morning, because Ephesus, Hierapolis and the open Cappadocian valleys give you almost no shade and the middle of the day is simply lost.

Layers, not volume

Because you will meet more than one of these climates on any itinerary that leaves Istanbul, the answer is layers you can shed rather than two complete wardrobes. See the packing list and when to go.

Sources

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: the inscription of Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia in 1985 under criteria (i)(iii)(v)(vii). Accessed 14 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Turkey health: vaccination advice and health risks for travelers. Accessed 14 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Turkey travel advice: the FCDO advises against all travel to parts of Turkey. Accessed 14 September 2026.