01 A steppe capital
The data come from the Turkish State Meteorological Service for the 1991–2020 period, with record extremes measured between 1927 and 2023. The annual mean is 12.6 °C and total precipitation 413.6 millimetres spread over about 104 rain days. To give you a sense: that is less water than much of northern Spain receives, and under a completely different regime.
Altitude explains a good deal of this. The city sits at 938 metres, in the Anatolian interior, far from any coast to soften its extremes. What on the Aegean shore would be a mild winter is, here, a real one.
02 Summer: genuinely dry
July brings 14.8 millimetres. August, 14.6. Between them the two months add up to about seven rain days, and much of that water arrives in short storms. It is a textbook summer drought: the steppe turns yellow and stays that way until October.
July has 327.8 hours of sunshine. December has 72.4. That is nearly four and a half times more light.
The heat is strong but not stifling, and the reason is humidity: in July and August the mean relative humidity drops to 45.5% and 45.3%, against 76.7% in January and December. Mean highs sit at 31 °C in both months, with an absolute record of 41 °C in July. In the shade and with that dryness it is bearable; in midday sun on the plateau it is not.
03 Winter: the part that surprises
January has a mean of 0.9 °C, with mean highs of 4.7 and lows of −2.2. December and February are much the same. And the record is the figure worth keeping in mind: −24.9 °C, recorded in January, with −24.2 in both February and December. It is not typical, but it is within what this city can do.
To the cold you must add the lack of light. December has 72.4 hours of sunshine in the whole month — about 2.4 a day — and January 69.6. If you are coming to see the city and walk the citadel hill, those two months give you little room.
04 When to go, in one sentence
September. It has a mean of 19.6 °C, 17.9 millimetres over barely 4.2 rain days and 261.9 hours of sunshine: by some distance the year's most favourable combination. October follows close behind, cooler (13.9 °C) and wetter (33.4 mm), with the advantage of very low light that suits the citadel's stone.
May and June are the other good window, with the steppe still green. Bear in mind that May is, against expectation, the wettest month of the year: 51 millimetres over twelve days. It is no tropical downpour, but count on getting wet some afternoon.
And if you have to come in January, come in January: the city works the same and the museum does not close. Just bring the coat you would bring to a continental capital, not the one you would bring to Türkiye.
