Trains in Turkey: High-Speed Lines and the Eastern Express

Turkey has two completely different railways. One is a modern high-speed network that will take you from Istanbul to Ankara in a little over four hours for less than the price of a decent lunch. The other is a slow, old, extraordinarily beautiful line that runs overnight into the eastern mountains and has become famous for it.

Neither of them goes to most of the places tourists want to visit. That is the first thing to understand.

The high-speed network

YHT, standing for yüksek hızlı tren, runs at up to 250 km/h on a small number of routes.

Trains have Economy and Business class, both comfortable, with a buffet car. Luggage allowance is generous by airline standards: one large bag or two smaller ones, with a small charge for anything oversized.

The Istanbul station question matters. The main YHT terminus is Söğütlüçeşme, on the Asian side. Some services continue through the Marmaray tunnel to Halkalı and Bakırköy on the European side. None of them stop at Sirkeci, and none of them are near Sultanahmet. Budget an hour to reach the station from the old city.

The Eastern Express

The Doğu Ekspresi runs from Ankara to Kars, in the far northeast near the Armenian border. It takes around twenty-four hours, climbing through Erzincan and Erzurum and across high plateau that is snow-covered for months.

It became a national phenomenon about a decade ago, when photographs of the winter run spread on social media, and it has been difficult to book ever since. There are two things sold under similar names:

• The regular Doğu Ekspresi, a scheduled service with sleeper compartments and seated coaches. Runs year-round. Cheaper, no frills, and the same scenery.
• The Turistik Doğu Ekspresi, a seasonal winter service with longer stops at Erzincan and Erzurum so passengers can get off and look around. Sells out within minutes of release.

Be realistic about what it is. Twenty-four hours is a long time in a small compartment, the heating is inconsistent, and the buffet car is not why anyone takes it. What you get is a full winter day of eastern Anatolia going past the window, which is genuinely one of the great train journeys and absolutely not a comfortable way to travel.

The other scenic lines

Two overnight services get far less attention and are much easier to book: the Van Gölü Ekspresi, running from Ankara to Tatvan on the shore of Lake Van, and the Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi, which heads southeast through Malatya and Diyarbakır. Both cross spectacular country and neither requires a booking battle.

Booking

• Where: the official TCDD site, ebilet.tcddtasimacilik.gov.tr, or the mobile app. Foreign visitors book with a passport number.
• When: reservations usually open around a month to two months before departure, varying by service. For the winter Eastern Express, be online the minute sales open.
• Seats: on the high-speed lines, book a window seat on the left leaving Ankara for Konya and you get the plateau; it hardly matters, the views are not the reason you take a YHT.

Where the train does not go

This is the practical limitation and it catches people out. There is no useful rail service to Cappadocia, Antalya, Bodrum, Fethiye, Trabzon or most of the Mediterranean and Aegean coast. The high-speed network connects the big central cities and almost nothing else.

For everywhere else it is a plane or a road. We compared the flying options in our guide to domestic flights in Turkey, and for a trip linking several regions a planned route by road usually beats both, which is how our Cappadocia and Central Anatolia tour is built.

When the train is the right choice

Istanbul to Ankara or Konya, every time. City centre to city centre, no airport queue, no baggage drop, a table to work at and a window. On that corridor the train beats flying outright.

And if the journey itself is the point, the overnight to the east is worth arranging a trip around. Just do it knowing that you are buying a view, not a comfortable night's sleep.