Lake Van, the largest lake in Türkiye, lies in eastern Anatolia within the provinces of Van and Bitlis, its surface lying at about 1,650 metres above sea level. It is a lake held back by a volcano: lava from Nemrut, flowing for more than 60 km, blocked the old drainage between the Van and Muş basins, and the water gathered behind that wall in a basin with no outlet. Its shoreline is cut by many bays, and at its deepest the lake goes down more than four hundred and fifty metres. The water is salty and rich in soda, so that despite the altitude and the hard winters the lake does not freeze, and the extinct volcanoes of Süphan and Nemrut rise to the west and north-west.
The salty, soda-rich water limits what can live in it, but one fish has made the lake famous. The pearl mullet, inci kefalı, which the Van governorship describes as living nowhere else in the world, leaves the soda water each year between 15 April and 15 July and swims up the fresh-water streams that feed the lake to spawn, leaping against the current over every obstacle. Deliçay at Erciş is one of the streams where the run is heaviest, and thousands of people come every year to watch it; the governorship calls the fish the symbol of Van.
The lake's east shore is old ground. The capital of the Urartian kingdom was founded there between the tenth and eighth centuries BC, and the Van Kalesi stands on the east shore, with the modern city of Van to its east. Four islands lie in the eastern part of the lake — Akdamar, Çarpanak, Adır and Kuş — declared an archaeological site in 1990. The best preserved of the Armenian churches and monasteries around the shores is the Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar, built between 915 and 921 by King Gagik Artzruni, whose outer walls are carved with reliefs of Bible stories: Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath. Greek geographers knew the water as Thospitis Lacus or Arsissa Lacus. Local people also speak of a monster in the lake, though the scientific teams sent to investigate found no trace of anything unusual.
Getting there
Organised tours of the region follow one of two routes around the lake: along the north shore through Erciş, Adilcevaz, Ahlat and Tatvan, or along the south through Van, Gevaş and Tatvan. In 1991 two stretches of shore in Bitlis province were declared tourism centres, at Ahlat on the north-west of the lake and at Tatvan.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Van as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -3 °C in January to 22.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in April (55 mm) and lightest in August (6 mm). Long-term means for 1939-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
