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Türkiye: Cycling Through a Country’s First Century
"A deeply thoughtful, gripping and scrupulous book told in Sayarer's trademark style from the saddle and the roadside" CAROLINE EDEN
By a winner of the Stanford Dolman Award for Travel Writing
"The best travelogues should make you question your preconceptions of a place and force you to engage with what the author is saying. Türkiye succeeds on both fronts" Cycle Magazine
"We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example" HORATIO CLARE
On the eve of its centenary year and elections that will shape the coming generations, Julian Emre Sayarer sets out to cycle across Türkiye, from the Aegean coast to the Armenian border.
Meeting Turkish farmers and workers, Syrian refugees and Russians avoiding conscription, the journey brings to life a living, breathing, cultural tapestry of the place where Asia, Africa and Europe converge. The result is a love letter to a country and its neighbours - one that offers a clear-eyed view of Türkiye and its place in a changing world. Yet the route is also marked by tragedy, as Sayarer cycles along a major fault line just months before one of the most devastating earthquakes in the region's modern history.
Always engaged with the big historical and political questions that inform so much of his writing, Sayarer uses his bicycle and the roadside encounters it allows to bring everything back to the human level. At the end of his journey we are left with a deeper understanding of the country, as well as the essential and universal nature of political power, both in Türkiye and closer to home.
"A persuasive corrective to western views of a place he loves" Guardian
By a winner of the Stanford Dolman Award for Travel Writing
"The best travelogues should make you question your preconceptions of a place and force you to engage with what the author is saying. Türkiye succeeds on both fronts" Cycle Magazine
"We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example" HORATIO CLARE
On the eve of its centenary year and elections that will shape the coming generations, Julian Emre Sayarer sets out to cycle across Türkiye, from the Aegean coast to the Armenian border.
Meeting Turkish farmers and workers, Syrian refugees and Russians avoiding conscription, the journey brings to life a living, breathing, cultural tapestry of the place where Asia, Africa and Europe converge. The result is a love letter to a country and its neighbours - one that offers a clear-eyed view of Türkiye and its place in a changing world. Yet the route is also marked by tragedy, as Sayarer cycles along a major fault line just months before one of the most devastating earthquakes in the region's modern history.
Always engaged with the big historical and political questions that inform so much of his writing, Sayarer uses his bicycle and the roadside encounters it allows to bring everything back to the human level. At the end of his journey we are left with a deeper understanding of the country, as well as the essential and universal nature of political power, both in Türkiye and closer to home.
"A persuasive corrective to western views of a place he loves" Guardian
- GenresTravel
405 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 15, 2024
Having lived and worked in Turkey and raising my kids with Turkish as their first language, this felt like a must read. It’s brilliant. It’s about the world, it’s about all of us. It’s as pleased to piece together geopolitics as it is to meet a nice person and share meal on the road.
Through the simple medium of travelling, slowly, around the country it distills and percolates what the country is and what it means. There’s an intimate knowledge of the language, people and culture but also a huge eye on how that fits into the world.
It’s affectionate, loving, scathing, angry, compassionate and clever while also managing to be fun loving, wide-eyed and ready to see things it has not seen before, and share them with us, the reader.
A pearl.
Through the simple medium of travelling, slowly, around the country it distills and percolates what the country is and what it means. There’s an intimate knowledge of the language, people and culture but also a huge eye on how that fits into the world.
It’s affectionate, loving, scathing, angry, compassionate and clever while also managing to be fun loving, wide-eyed and ready to see things it has not seen before, and share them with us, the reader.
A pearl.
May 12, 2026
A fascinating read having just visited the country a few times. Alludes to much which I shall now have to go and find out about, and is more of a political study than a typical travelogue, but honest and engaging.
November 24, 2023
It's not very well written and not well informed about the history of Turkey.
July 16, 2025
Read on holiday at HPB Physkos, Turunc.
August 11, 2025
I’ve not yet visited Turkey, and while I’ve read histories of the Ottomans, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, the effervescent Elif Shafak, and hold reserved room for Tezer Özlü and Yaşar Kemal, my exposure to the literature, artwork, and philosophies of the Turkish people is still limited. I’m hoping a future visit to Istanbul will resolve that; however, in the meantime, I have to live vicariously through travellers like Sayarer.
And live vicariously we do. Just over 500km outside of Istanbul, the action begins in Selanik (or Thessaloniki), and follows him across the Turkish countryside to Kars, on the eastern border of Turkey, just south of the Republic of Georgia, before returning by train to Ankara. Along the way, he explores the different cultures, ethnicities, political viewpoints, religious practices, and regional cuisines. Through his approach to slow travel, cycling by bicycle through the country’s diverse terrain, he opens himself to experiences that only the slow traveller can experience. Indeed, the narrative reads as a steady creep across the land of his ancestors, his exposure to the nuances of the peoples he meets a series of important teachings that only they might impart.
One particular benefit to reading this travel narrative was Sayarer’s attention to political history, especially in considering the relationships between Kurds and other ethnicities prevalent throughout the region. Additionally, his narrative voice is one of a wizened traveller, a testament to the lessons learned through previous voyages detailed in his other works like Iberia and Fifty Miles Wide. While I’ve not yet read those works, I can only hope they read as impressively as this text does.
4 stars (more like 4.5). This is the kind of travel narrative I deeply enjoy and pass on to other readers to explore. In fact, upon finishing, I immediately sent a sample of the work to a friend who operates a long-distance travel cycling podcast and website. Experiences like these must be shared, especially when the writer captures their experience with such panache. Reading Sayarer proved deeply rewarding. For certain, I’ll look for another of his travelogues in the future. Recommended.
And live vicariously we do. Just over 500km outside of Istanbul, the action begins in Selanik (or Thessaloniki), and follows him across the Turkish countryside to Kars, on the eastern border of Turkey, just south of the Republic of Georgia, before returning by train to Ankara. Along the way, he explores the different cultures, ethnicities, political viewpoints, religious practices, and regional cuisines. Through his approach to slow travel, cycling by bicycle through the country’s diverse terrain, he opens himself to experiences that only the slow traveller can experience. Indeed, the narrative reads as a steady creep across the land of his ancestors, his exposure to the nuances of the peoples he meets a series of important teachings that only they might impart.
One particular benefit to reading this travel narrative was Sayarer’s attention to political history, especially in considering the relationships between Kurds and other ethnicities prevalent throughout the region. Additionally, his narrative voice is one of a wizened traveller, a testament to the lessons learned through previous voyages detailed in his other works like Iberia and Fifty Miles Wide. While I’ve not yet read those works, I can only hope they read as impressively as this text does.
4 stars (more like 4.5). This is the kind of travel narrative I deeply enjoy and pass on to other readers to explore. In fact, upon finishing, I immediately sent a sample of the work to a friend who operates a long-distance travel cycling podcast and website. Experiences like these must be shared, especially when the writer captures their experience with such panache. Reading Sayarer proved deeply rewarding. For certain, I’ll look for another of his travelogues in the future. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews