Samsun

I’ll admit Samsun wasn’t on my radar until a Turkish friend in Istanbul told me, almost scolding, that I couldn’t claim to understand modern Turkey without going. She was right to push. Samsun is where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stepped off a ship on the 19th of May, 1919, and effectively began the Turkish War of Independence — a date so central to the national story that it’s a public holiday, and the city treats the anniversary less like a plaque-unveiling and more like a civic reawakening, with parades and youth rallies that fill the boulevards. I arrived on an ordinary Tuesday, and even then the Atatürk Museum near the harbor, housed in the very building associated with his landing, had a steady trickle of visitors moving through with the quiet reverence of people at a shrine.

Beyond the history, Samsun surprised me by being a genuinely modern, working city rather than a coastal curiosity. It’s an industrial and agricultural hub, and the surrounding Çarşamba plain grows a huge share of Turkey’s tobacco — I drove past fields of it on the way in, the broad leaves strung up to dry on wooden racks outside farmhouses, a smell in the air that was earthy and faintly sweet.

A City That Faces Forward

What I liked about Samsun was that it didn’t perform for visitors. The long waterfront promenade, Sahil Yolu, is where the city actually lives — families cycling, teenagers playing volleyball on sand courts, old men fishing off the breakwater with radios tuned to football. I ate a very good plate of Black Sea-style corn bread and grilled hamsi at a place recommended by a taxi driver, no English menu in sight, and spent longer than planned just people-watching along the water as container ships moved slowly across the horizon.

The Bandırma Ferry, a decommissioned vessel similar to the one Atatürk sailed on, is now a floating museum docked near the harbor, and climbing aboard to see the cramped cabins and period furnishings gave me a clearer sense of the actual physical journey than any textbook had. Samsun isn’t chasing Turkey’s tourist trail, and that’s precisely its appeal — a real, working Black Sea city that happens to hold one of the most consequential dates in the country’s modern history.

When to go: Around May 19th if you want to witness the commemorations firsthand — book accommodation well ahead. Otherwise, June to September offers the warmest, most pleasant weather for the waterfront and nearby beaches.