Istanbul Airport to the western shore

The wide water on your right looks like a lake but is not: Küçükçekmece is a lagoon. It was once a bay open to the Marmara; sand carried by the current slowly closed its mouth, leaving a body of water joined to the sea by a narrow channel. An archaeological excavation has been running on its shore for years, and the settlement emerging there shows Istanbul's known history reaching this far west. This stretch runs calmly; you are outside the traffic heading into the centre.

Yeşilköy was formerly Ayastefanos, San Stefano in western languages. The treaty ending the Russo-Turkish war was signed here in 1878 and redrew the empire's Balkan borders outright; it would be rewritten in Berlin months later, but the first text was put on the table in this village. The same village holds a second first: Turkey's first airfield was established here in 1912. Aviation began on this shore, and as the next stop shows, it also ended here.

The wide flat ground on your left was Atatürk Airport. In 2019 scheduled passenger flights moved to the new airport and the runways fell silent overnight; the site is now being turned into a large city park. For a transfer company this is not history but daily work: some passengers still say "Atatürk" while meaning the new airport, and which one they mean has to be confirmed at booking. There are fifty kilometres between them, so the cost of the confusion is an hour.

Bakırköy was Hebdomon in the Byzantine period, so called because it stood at the city's seventh milestone. This was where emperors were proclaimed before the army; the decisive moment before any coronation happened not inside the walls but on this shore. Today Bakırköy means a long waterfront promenade with a dense market behind it. Driving inside the market is slow; your driver stops on the shore road or at the market entrance and carries your luggage to the door.