A national park in Türkiye can be almost anything. Some protect glaciers and summits close to 4,000 metres, some a marsh where around 300 bird species have been recorded, some a Hittite capital or the ground of a battle, and since August 2026 two of them are stretches of open sea. This site has guides to fifty-four of them. Below they are grouped by region, with a few lines on the best-known; how to get in and what is built there is on each park's own page.
Marmara and Thrace: a mountain above Bursa and parks for birds
Uludağ National Park covers 13,024 hectares south and south-east of Bursa and has been protected since 1961. You can drive up or take the cable car, and paths on both slopes link the valleys and hills inside it.
Kuş Cenneti — Bird Paradise — sits at the north-eastern corner of Lake Manyas, between Bandırma and Manyas; it is one of the few protected areas set up specifically for birds, holds the Council of Europe's Class A diploma, and the lake has been a Ramsar site since 1998. In Thrace, İğneada Longoz Forests near Demirköy is a rare meeting of sea, lagoon and forest: streams coming down from the Yıldız mountains end in lakes behind a dune barrier, and in spring their water backs up and floods the woodland. Gala Lake, between Enez and İpsala in Edirne, has a bird list of 232 species, Dalmatian pelican and pygmy cormorant among them.
Kazdağı National Park, at Edremit, takes its name from the mountain that divides the Marmara and Aegean regions. Twenty-nine plants, the Kazdağı fir among them, grow on this mountain and nowhere else.
The Aegean: a peninsula, a delta and a new marine park
Dilek Peninsula–Büyük Menderes Delta National Park, in the Kuşadası, Söke and Didim districts of Aydın, joins two very different pieces of ground. The peninsula, protected in 1966, carries some of the finest maquis in the country; the delta, added in 1994, is lagoon, salt meadow and tidal flat, and few places in the Aegean matter more to migrating birds. The entrance is in Güzelçamlı.
Inland, Honaz Dağı rises above Denizli to 2,500 metres over a very short distance from the plain, which makes it a paragliding ground, and it is where Mediterranean vegetation meets the steppe plants of the interior. Marmaris National Park rings the town of Marmaris on the Reşadiye peninsula and is the place to look for the oriental sweetgum. The Northern Aegean Marine National Park was declared in August 2026 over 174,214 hectares of sea.
The Mediterranean: canyons, ancient cities and the sea off Lycia
Olympos Beydağları Coastal National Park follows the Antalya coast from Sarısu to Cape Gelidonya, and inside it are the ancient cities of Phaselis and Olympos, the beaches of Çıralı and Adrasan, and the Yanartaş flames. Köprülü Kanyon, in Manavgat, is built around a canyon fourteen kilometres long and a hundred metres deep, with cedar forest above it and an old stone bridge over the Köprü stream that is still in use. Güllük Dağı–Termessos, north-west of Antalya, was protected in 1970, above all for the ancient city of Termessos.
Saklıkent near Fethiye is a canyon on the Esen stream that people walk and raft. In İbradı, Altınbeşik Cave lies under water and is visited by boat. The sea between Fethiye and Kaş became a marine national park in August 2026; at 2,170,603 hectares it is much the larger of the country's first two marine parks. In Osmaniye, Karatepe–Aslantaş shows its Late Hittite remains where they were found, and the national parks directorate calls it Türkiye's first open-air museum.
Central Anatolia and the Lakes Region
Aladağlar, where Niğde, Kayseri and Adana meet, holds the highest summits of the Taurus — Kızılkaya reaches 3,771 metres — and is one of the most sought-after climbing grounds in Türkiye. Sultan Sazlığı, north of Mount Erciyes and seventy kilometres from Kayseri, holds fresh and salt water side by side. Around 300 bird species have been recorded, cranes, flamingos and white-headed ducks among them, and boats go out among the reeds.
Beyşehir Lake National Park in Konya covers 88,750 hectares around the largest freshwater source in the country, its islands nesting ground for grebes, cormorants and herons. Kızıldağ, above the same lake around Şarkikaraağaç in Isparta, is known for cedars whose needles carry a blue cast, and a marked path, the YY-2, runs from the cedar forest down to a viewpoint over Beyşehir.
Yozgat Çamlığı, declared in February 1958, is recorded by the provincial directorate as the first national park in Türkiye. In Çorum, Boğazköy–Alacahöyük protects Hattusa, the Hittite capital, with its city walls, the Lion Gate and Yazılıkaya. Cappadocia has its own guide under the name Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia, a listing that reaches beyond Göreme to the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı.
The Black Sea: lakes, forest and the Kaçkar
Kaçkar Mountains National Park covers 52,967 hectares across Rize, Artvin and Erzurum, and its summits approach 4,000 metres barely thirty kilometres in from the sea. The usual ways in are Ayder and Zilkale on the Rize side and Olgunlar village on the Artvin side. In Bolu, Yedigöller is a chain of lakes dammed by landslips inside forest dense enough to be called a sea of forest, and Abant, 33 kilometres from Bolu, is a lake park.
Küre Mountains, across Kastamonu and Bartın, is canyon country: the Valla Canyon is more than a thousand metres deep and a glass terrace hangs over the Çatak Canyon. Ilgaz, between Kastamonu and Çankırı, is above all a winter park. Altındere Valley at Maçka, 47 kilometres from Trabzon, is where most people go for the Sümela monastery, which stands inside the park. Near Artvin, Hatila Valley is a steep, V-shaped valley with waterfalls, and Karagöl–Sahara near Şavşat pairs a landslide-dammed lake with spruce and fir forest.
The east and south-east: volcanoes, glaciers and valleys
Mount Nemrut National Park, across Adıyaman and Malatya, is known for the tumulus of Antiochos I of Commagene at 2,150 metres, with colossal seated figures up to seven metres high on its terraces. Ağrı Dağı, Mount Ararat, became a national park in 2004 and is the highest mountain in Türkiye. Nemrut Caldera, a different Nemrut near Tatvan in Bitlis, holds five lakes at 2,247 metres in a volcanic crater and has been a Ramsar wetland since 2013.
In Hakkâri, the Cilo and Sat Mountains park, declared in 2020, joins the Cilo glaciers to the Sat lakes, thirty glacial and crater lakes among peaks above 3,000 metres. Munzur Valley runs from 8 kilometres outside Tunceli the length of the valley to Ovacık. Sarıkamış–Allahuekber, on the border of Kars and Erzurum, is where Scots pine reaches its highest altitude in Türkiye, with memorials to the soldiers who froze there in 1914-1915. Divriği, in Sivas, is a canyon park unlike most, with castles, railway bridges and tunnels, and a glass viewing terrace. Geben Valley in Kahramanmaraş was added in 2025, and the Deveboynu peninsula on Lake Van at the end of August 2026.
Historical national parks: battlefields and a supply road
Başkomutan, near Afyonkarahisar, covers the battlefield of the Great Offensive of 26-30 August 1922 in two separate sections, Kocatepe and Dumlupınar. Sakarya Meydan Muharebesi, in the Polatlı and Haymana districts of Ankara, is scattered over twenty-four parcels. Malazgirt, in Muş, is named for the battle of 26 August 1071; Nene Hatun, four kilometres from the centre of Erzurum, holds the Aziziye and Mecidiye redoubts. İstiklal Yolu follows the supply road of the War of Independence from İnebolu towards Ankara, though most of it now lies under asphalt.
Getting there
A handful of parks work without a car. For Kovada Lake, a birdwatchers' park south of Eğirdir, take the hourly municipal bus between Isparta and Eğirdir, then a taxi; for Sultan Sazlığı, the Yahyalı buses to Ova Çiftliği village, two kilometres from the marsh; for Kuş Cenneti, a bus from Balıkesir to Manyas and local transport; and Divriği is served by regional trains and the Doğu Ekspresi. Many others are car country, and facilities range from places to stay across the Kaçkar to a day-use picnic ground and little else. Read the park's own page before planning a night there, and if mountains are what you are after, the companion post on the mountains of Türkiye goes higher.
