Çerkezköy
Çerkezköy is a town in Eastern Thrace, the European part of Turkey - or rather, it's the nucleus of a sprawling conurbation, with a population of 174,529 in 2019. It's modern, industrial and devoid of tourist sights, but it does have accommodation and other amenities. You would only come here for business or a family funeral.
Çerkezköy is the place where in 1929 the Orient Express really did get stuck in the snow for five days. Anyone who lures a partner here on pretext of re-creating the ambiance of that incident will deserve a fate worse than any devised by Agatha Christie for her fictionalised version.
Understand
By 1400 Timur was a-building the Mughal Empire and controlled a huge swathe of Asia. At Ankara he crushed the Ottomans and captured their sultan Bayezid, who died in captivity. Faced with this threat, it seemed like a smart idea to Bayezid's sons to fight each other for the succession. One of them was Süleyman Çelebi, who'd escaped from the battle at Ankara, and for a while he ruled a shaky principality around Edirne. By 1411 his nearest and dearest caught up with him, he tried to flee to Byzantium, but was murdered here. The settlement became known as Türbedere, "tomb-stream".
Eventually it was the Ottomans not the Mughals or Byzantines who got to rule this area for 500 years, but Thrace was threatened or invaded several times as their empire crumbled. In the 18th and 19th centuries Russia expanded and won several wars against the Ottomans, and their hand fell even more heavily north of the Black Sea, in the region then called Circassia and now called Abkhazia. Its resistance to Russia was ended in 1864 by genocide and a scorched-earth policy; refugees found shelter elsewhere in Turkey, and many were settled here. Türbedere therefore became the "Circassian village", Çerkez köy.
The conflicts within Thrace were with Greece and Bulgaria. Many refugees from Bulgaria settled here in the late 19th / early 20th century, and in 1912 / 13 Bulgaria occupied the town for nine months and utterly destroyed it, including Süleyman's tomb. Greece then occupied it from 1920 to 1922. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne drew the present borders of Turkey, and Çerkezköy was left to prosper as a market town along the main road and railway between Istanbul, Edirne and the west. It stands in the well-watered fertile Thracian plain, and understandably it has a large army base.
In 1971 the town was chosen as an industrial base, and traditional trades based on agriculture and textiles were supplanted by manufacture of plastic and rubber goods, paints, chemicals, white goods and automobile parts. The place sucked in labour and population from Anatolia, and grew into a sprawling conurbation of several townships. It's still growing, an unlovely landscape of apartment blocks and industrial units, from which every antiquity has been obliterated. Meanwhile Istanbul also burgeoned - since 2005 its metropolitan boundary is just 10 km down the road from Çerkezköy.
Get in
By plane
Istanbul Airport (IST IATA) 100 km east has a global network of flights. A direct bus runs from the airport to Çorlu, where you change for a local bus.
Tekirdağ Çorlu Airport (TEQ IATA), 35 km south of Çerkezköy, has flights from Ankara.
By train
All trains are suspended in 2021. Çerkezköy is on the main line from Europe to Edirne and Istanbul, so the nightly Bosphorus Express from Sofia and Bucharest arrives in the early hours of the morning, reaching Istanbul for 08:00. The westbound Express picks up towards midnight - make sure you're in the right section, as the train divides at the border.
A regional train from Kapikule and Edirne calls around 10:00 on its way to Istanbul Halkali (2 hours), returning westbound towards 20:00.
Çerkezköy is the junction with the former railway from Europe, the historic route of the Orient Express. This criss-crossed the border with Greece and was replaced in 1971, but a regional train runs west once a day as far as Uzunköprü. Trains no longer reach Pithio in Greece, and there is no border crossing there nowadays.
There is also a motorail terminal here, and Optima Express formerly had a weekly service from Austria, avoiding a tiring drive across the Balkans.
The 1 railway station is 2 km east of town centre.
The railway across Thrace is being rebuilt to take YHT high speed trains between Istanbul, Çerkezköy and Edirne. There's every hope that this will be complete some time in the 21st century.
By bus
Istanbul Seyahat buses run hourly from Istanbul, taking about an hour, for a fare of 70 TL.
Metro Turizm run here by a roundabout route, so their buses take four hours.
A swarm of dolmuş connect Çerkezköy with Tekirdağ (90 min) and Çorlu to the south, and Saray and Vize to the north.
The 2 bus station is south edge of town centre.
By car
The town is 110 km east of Istanbul: follow O-3 / E80 toll highway then branch onto D567. From IST airport follow O-7 to join O-3.
Get around
The core of town is the 2 km strip along Atatürk Cd, called Gazi Osman Paşa - this part is walkable and has most visitor amenities. Dolmuşes run to the main burbs but you'll need a car or taxi to get around the conurbation.
See
- 1 Osmanlı Mosque is the town's oldest, with an attractive interior.
Do
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A world record
Setting a world record for being the train service with the longest delay to arrive at its destination, it was here in the station of Çerkezköy (then spelled Tcherkesskeuy on the timetables) that a Paris-bound Orient Express service was stranded in a snowdrift for five days in February 1929, during such a legendarily cold winter that even the saltwater of Istanbul's Bosphorus was covered with thick ice. (Some argue that the train was actually trapped in a blizzard near the now derelict station of the village of Kabakça, then Kabakdja, 40 km east of Çerkezköy on the track from Istanbul.) This was one of the events that inspired Agatha Christie for Murder on the Orient Express, although the plot refers to the location where the train was stuck as Vinkovci in what is today eastern Croatia. |
Buy
- Migros, Demir and Onur are supermarkets near town centre, all open daily 08:00-22:00.
Eat
There's a line of eating places along the main street Atatürk Cd, and one block east at the foot of Öztrak Cd.
Drink
Several along main street, with another cluster north near the hospital. They weren't open in 2021.
Sleep
- 1 Çerkezköy Tunali Butik Hotel, Gazi Osman Paşa, Atatürk Cd, ☏ +90 282 725 3993. Very central, but tiny basic rooms and cleaning erratic.
- 2 Güneşler Otel, Gazi Osman Paşa, Topculer Sk 3, ☏ +90 282 726 9191. Mid-range place, gets very mixed reviews.
- 3 Golden Palas Hotel, Gazi Osman Paşa, Atatürk Cd 121, ☏ +90 282 726 4777. Modern hotel at the intersection north edge of downtown. Large rooms, not well maintained. B&B double 450 TL.
- City Hotel, Gazi Osman Paşa, Atatürk Cd 97 (200 m south of Golden Palas), ☏ +90 282 725 1669. Simple basic hotel, fair value for what you're paying. B&B double 400 TL.
Connect
Çerkezköy and its approach highways have 4G from all Turkish carriers. As of Dec 2021, 5G has not rolled out in Turkey.
Go next
- Saray — a smaller nearby town, but with much more of a local flavour. Also serves as a hub for the beautiful forests of the Istranca Mountains, as well as beaches and historic towns on the Black Sea coast.