Beyşehir is the third largest lake in Türkiye and the largest of its freshwater lakes, lying in the Lakes District across land belonging to both Konya and Isparta. It sits in a tectonic hollow ringed by mountains: the Taurus range to the west and south, the volcanic Erenler Dağı to the east, and the Sultan and Anamas mountains along the northwest–southeast axis. Peaks above two thousand metres close the view on every side.
The water surface stands about 1,123 metres above sea level and the lake stretches forty-five kilometres from northwest to southeast, twenty-four across at its widest. In 2011 its area was measured at 663 square kilometres. That figure moves with the water: over the observation period between 1960 and 2001 the level ranged from a low of 1120.85 metres, when the lake covered 645 square kilometres, to a high of 1125.50 metres at 663. It holds roughly 5.4 billion cubic metres.
For a lake of that width it is remarkably shallow. The eastern and southern parts run six to seven metres deep, the west three to five, and the deepest point anywhere is ten metres. The shores differ in the same way: the western side is high and steep, easing only where the Yenişar plain reaches the water, while the eastern and southern shores are low and gently sloped, with the Yeşildağ and Kıreli plains behind them. The Şarkikaraağaç plain lies to the north, the Beyşehir plain to the south.
The lake's outflow leaves at the southeast as the stream known locally as Uluarık, the Çarşamba or Beyşehir Çayı, which travels some sixty kilometres to empty into Lake Suğla. A large regulator was built beside the town of Beyşehir to draw on that water for irrigating the Konya plain, and a canal carries the surplus to the Çarşamba. The Sultan mountains that run about a hundred kilometres along the northeast do double duty as scenery and as the watershed divide separating this basin from those of Eğirdir and Akşehir.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Isparta as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 1.9 °C in January to 23.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (86 mm) and lightest in August (14 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
