Türkiye: Cycling Through a Country’s First Century

"A deeply thoughtful, gripping and scrupulous book told in Sayarer's trademark style from the saddle and the roadside" CAROLINE EDEN

By a winner of the Stanford Dolman Award for Travel Writing

"The best travelogues should make you question your preconceptions of a place and force you to engage with what the author is saying. Türkiye succeeds on both fronts" Cycle Magazine

"We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example" HORATIO CLARE

On the eve of its centenary year and elections that will shape the coming generations, Julian Emre Sayarer sets out to cycle across Türkiye, from the Aegean coast to the Armenian border.

Meeting Turkish farmers and workers, Syrian refugees and Russians avoiding conscription, the journey brings to life a living, breathing, cultural tapestry of the place where Asia, Africa and Europe converge. The result is a love letter to a country and its neighbours - one that offers a clear-eyed view of Türkiye and its place in a changing world. Yet the route is also marked by tragedy, as Sayarer cycles along a major fault line just months before one of the most devastating earthquakes in the region's modern history.

Always engaged with the big historical and political questions that inform so much of his writing, Sayarer uses his bicycle and the roadside encounters it allows to bring everything back to the human level. At the end of his journey we are left with a deeper understanding of the country, as well as the essential and universal nature of political power, both in Türkiye and closer to home.

"A persuasive corrective to western views of a place he loves" Guardian