Time in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

is given by UTC+03:00 year-round. This time is also called Turkey Time (''TRT''). The time at most is the same as in the

Moscow Time Moscow Time (MSK, russian: моско́вское вре́мя) is the time zone for the city of Moscow, Russia, and most of western Russia, including Saint Petersburg. It is the second-westernmost of the eleven time zones of Russia. It has ...

and

Arabia Standard Time UTC+03:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +03:00. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours later than the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Following the ISO 8601 standard, a time with this offset would be wri ...

zones. TRT was adopted by the

Turkish Government The Government of Turkey ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Hükûmeti) is the national government of Turkey. It is governed as a unitary state under a presidential representative democracy and a constitutional republic within a pluriform multi-party ...

on 8 September 2016. It was also in use in the

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Northern Cyprus ( tr, Kuzey Kıbrıs), officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC; tr, Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti, ''KKTC''), is a ''de facto'' state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. Recog ...

until it reverted to

Eastern European Time Eastern European Time (EET) is one of the names of UTC+02:00 time zone, 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time, so that it uses UTC+03:00 during the summer. A number of African countries use UTC+0 ...

(EET) in October 2017. During some seasons the TRT is also on the same time as Eastern European Time.

History

Until 1927, "Turkish time" (or ''alla turca'' time or ''ezânî'' time) referred to the system of setting the clocks to 12:00 midnight at sunset. This necessitated adjusting the clocks daily, although tower clocks were only reset two or three times a week, and the precise time varied from one location to another depending on latitude and longitude. The day was divided into two 12-hour periods, with the second 12:00 occurring at a "theoretical sunrise." In practice, the Turkish railroads used both Turkish time (for public schedules) and eastern European time (for actually scheduling the trains), and government telegraph lines used St. Sophia time (i.e., Paris time + 1:47:32) for international telegrams. Until 2016, Turkey used

(EET) in the winter ( UTC+02:00) and

Eastern European Summer Time Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) is one of the names of the UTC+03:00 time zone, which is 3 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used as a summer daylight saving time in some European and Middle Eastern countries, which makes it ...

(EEST) (UTC+03:00) during the summer. The date for transition between standard time and daylight saving time generally followed EU rules, but had variations in some years. In 2016, the decision to stay on UTC+03:00 year-round was enacted. However, in October 2017, the Turkish government announced that starting 28 October 2018, the country would revert to EET, but this sudden decision was reversed in November 2017. In October 2018, a presidential decree announced that the UTC+03:00 would remain the year-round permanent

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it is ...

for the country. Today, during summers TRT time is the same as with the EET, while an hour ahead of EET in Winter and other the partial half of other seasons.

Controversy

The time change made caused many criticisms and controversy, within the public and specially media which continues on to this day. Though some critics argue that this change saves money, most argue that the change actually rather causes waste. It is also among the criticisms that the change creates psychological and security problems, specially during school entry hours for students, and benefits only electricity companies.

References

{{Turkey-stub

History

Controversy

See also

References