İzmirculture & etiquette

On 30 October 2020 a magnitude-7.0 quake in the Aegean Sea killed around 117 people in İzmir, almost all of them in mid-rise blocks that collapsed in Bayraklı. Favour post-2000 construction built to the updated code, or a building with documented retrofitting (güçlendirme); ask for the yapı ruhsatı date, ask what floor you're on, and know your exits. It is the single most important question you can ask a landlord here, and it outranks the view.

Lira inflation is high enough that a rent agreed in TRY is a different rent in real terms within months. Keep savings in USD or EUR in a döviz sub-account and convert only what you're about to spend. Central exchange offices (döviz) beat bank counters, and both comfortably beat the counters at Adnan Menderes.

The İzmirim Kart covers ESHOT buses, the metro, both tram lines, the İZBAN commuter railway and the İZDENİZ bay ferries, with transfer discounts when you change. The İZBAN runs over 130 km from Aliağa in the north to Selçuk in the south and stops at Adnan Menderes airport — so you can land and be in Alsancak on a commuter train for the price of a bus fare, which almost no arriving passenger realises.

İzmir summers are long, dry and reach the high thirties, and the afternoon sea breeze — the imbat — is what makes the coast liveable while inland Bornova and Buca bake. The flip side is fire: the Aegean has a genuine wildfire season from roughly June to September, roads and coastal villages do get closed, and the forest-fire line (177, now routed into 112) is one worth knowing before you need it.

Konak and Alsancak on the south shore versus Karşıyaka and Bostanlı on the north is the defining İzmir choice, and the ferry between them is 15-20 minutes of open water rather than a chore. Karşıyaka is cheaper, greener and family-shaped; Alsancak is where the bars, the offices and the walkable street life are. Commuting across daily is entirely normal — commuting around the head of the bay by road at rush hour is not.

İzmir votes differently, drinks openly, and is markedly more relaxed about dress, gender and religion than Ankara or the Anatolian interior — the old nickname 'gâvur İzmir' was an insult the city adopted as a badge. For many arrivals it's the easiest social landing in the country. It also means the culture shock runs the other way when you travel inland.