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Buy/gift a digital subscription Login to the Digital EditionEnclosed by ancient walls, ringed by mountains and washed by the Black Sea, remote Sinop has its own rich history and culture. Clara Robins finds ‘Turkey’s happiest city’ vibrant and forward looking, without the tourist gloss
An old saying goes: “There are three harbours on the Black Sea – July, August and Sinop”. Sinop is as far north as one can travel in Anatolia. For much of its history it was effectively cut off from the mainland, on the Boztepe peninsula, connected by a narrow isthmus. The city is the only natural harbour along the southern Black Sea coast, and in antiquity was the sole safe refuge from the sea’s violent tempests. Surrounding mountains made it hard to visit from the land, yet road construction was deliberately avoided, being unnecessary for trade and useful for invading armies.
Sinop’s identity and economy have always been defined by the sea. It lay within Paphlagonia, that rugged northern Anatolian region whose people, the Paphlagonians, are mentioned in the Iliad. While evidence for earlier settlement has come to light, the traditional story is that Sinop was first settled by Miletans in the 7th century BC, when it became the nexus of Black Sea trade. Until the 1980s, one could reach Sinop by passenger ferry from Istanbul. Once the ferries stopped, Sinop was no longer easily accessible to casual travellers by sea.
For those arriving by land today, a sense of enclosure still remains. Wrapped in imposing city walls, Sinop feels like an invitingly characterful provincial town, certainly not a seaside resort – and all the better for it. There are no skyscrapers and few signs of tourist gloss. In summer Sinop can be humid, like much of the Black Sea coast, but in late September it was sunny and fresh. A modern statue of Diogenes, Sinop’s most legendary ancient inhabitant, greeted us at the entrance to the city. Born here around 413BC, the great Cynic philosopher was exiled after a scandal, famously living out his days in a pithos, or storage jar, in a radical rejection of wealth and social convention.
Our minibus squeezed down a lively street lined with fishmongers, esnaf lokantaları (artisan restaurants) serving fried fish for workers’ lunches, and fishing tackle shops. Hamsi (anchovies) and palamut (bonito) were in season. Strabo, the 1st-century BC geographer from nearby Amasya, described the migration of pelamides through the Black Sea, noting that only upon reaching Sinop are the fish large enough to be caught and preserved in salt. This is the origin of the modern-day Turkish delicacy lakerda, in which palamut is pickled in brine, and Sinop’s Lakerda Festival…
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