For visits and excursions the most suitable months are: May, June, September, and in south Turkey, also October. On the south coast and, because of the moderate climate, also on the Marmara Sea, the bathing season commences at the beginning of May, on the Aegean Sea about the end of May, and on the Black Sea in June. In almost all regions it ends in late autumn.
The irruption of this highland mass has created climatic conditions that vary considerably from those normally associated with the Mediterranean. In the winter, the high plateau particularly in the east is a high-pressure area forming an insurmountable obstacle to the rain-bearing Mediterranean or Pontic barometric depressions. These empty themselves on the marginal mountain chains of Asia Minor, and rarely penetrate the interior, where drought is thus added to the harsh temperatures due to the altitude, while the peripheral coastal areas have a damp climate with a mild winter.
1. The marginal areas. The typical Mediterranean climate
prevails only on a narrow fringe of the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. There the winter is mild (average temperature in January 8°3 C at Izmir) and the summer warm (27°7 C at Izmir in July), the rainfall fairly heavy at Izmir, which is in a sheltered position, it is 25.6 in. a year, but at Dortyol in the Gulf of Alexandretta, particularly subject to winter depressions, it is 42.5 in. and confined almost exclusively to the cooler season from October to April. In the eastern sector of the Black Sea coast, the climate is rather different. The winter there is also mild (7°C in January at Trebizond), but the summer is markedly cooler (23°2 C in August at Trabzon). Here the rainfall is much more evenly distributed, the 34.6 in. of annual rainfall being spread almost equally over the year, with a relative mini-mum in springtime and a maximum in autumn. The sub-tropical anticyclone whose stability gives the Mediterranean its fine, warm weather affects the Black Sea only very temporarily; the latter still attracts the depressions of the temperate zone, particularly in autumn, when its surface cools slowly in contrast to the rapidly cooling southern front of the Eurasian continent and the high pressures of the cold season develop. In the spring time, however, there is relatively little cyclogenesis since the sea does not present any appreciable thermal contrast with the rapidly warming continent. Finally, the western shores of the Black Sea, Thrace and the regions round the Marmara, and a transition zone that loops round the west of Asia Minor from the basins of Bithynia to the Pisidian lakes, reappearing diminished in width on the south-eastern escarpment of the plateau, all show a falling-off from the Mediterranean climate. The winter temperature is already colder (5°3 C at Istanbul in January, -0°4 C at Eskishehir, altitude 1000 feet). The rainfall, declining rapidly towards the interior (Istanbul, 24 in., Eskişehir, 12 in.), still follows the general Mediterranean pattern, reaching its maximum in the cold season, but towards the interior rain becomes increasingly frequent in the spring and early summer, when it is linked with the storms that form in the barometric trough at the beginning of the hot season.
2. The interior. In the central regions, the climate is characterized mainly by low rainfall 11.9 in. at Konya, 14.9 in. at Kayseri. The temperatures, however, are roughly similar to those in the zone just described (Konya, 0°5 C in January and 23° 4 C in July; Kayseri, 2°7 C in January and 23°2 C in July) with a tendency to colder winters towards the east. But the distribution of the rainfall is appreciably different, the maximum rainfall tending increasingly to occur in the spring and summer rather than the winter. The rainfall is always lowest at the end of the summer, but there is also a lesser decline in February-Marc. These characteristics become more clearly defined in the high plateaux of north-east Anatolia. While the total rainfall is slightly higher (Kars, 19.7 in. at an altitude of 5740 feet), the winter minimum is lower than the summer one, though no season is entirely dry. The winters are extremely hard (Kars, 11°9 C in January, Erzurum, 8°7 C), while the summers are tempered by the altitude (Kars, 18°7 in July, Erzurum, 20°).
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