i.The Plateau of a Thousand Lakes
Bingöl sits 144 kilometres east of Elazığ, on the high northern shoulder of the Upper Euphrates basin. The land is a tableland built by ancient lava — basalts and andesites poured out at the close of the Tertiary, then cracked into a wide pattern of horsts and grabens. Mountains lift the horizon on every side; their summits hold dozens of small glacial pools that, taken together, give the province its name. Bin göl — a thousand lakes.
The largest mass of high country is the Bingöl Mountains themselves, a shield-volcano range about fifty kilometres long that rises to 3,250 metres at the summit of Bingöl Dağı, near the town of Karlıova. The mountain's south flank is sharp; its north flank slopes gently away toward the Murat valley. From a high meadow above Karlıova between the middle of July and the middle of August, the sunrise comes up across the eastern peaks in a way the local people have always considered worth the climb.
Below the snow line, oak woodland covers the slopes up to about 1,900 metres. The northern half of the province carries the densest forest in Eastern Anatolia. Where the trees have been worked too hard, the steppe takes over — the same dry-grass plateau that runs from here all the way to the Iranian border. Bees thrive on both: the high-meadow honey of the Şerafettin yaylas is sought after across the country.
A thousand mountain pools, scattered across a high plateau where the Persian, Roman, and Seljuk worlds once met.
ii.The Floating Islands of Lake Aksakal
South-east of Bingöl city, in the Solhan district, a small road runs four and a half kilometres off the Bingöl–Muş highway and ends at a hamlet called Aksakal. Beyond the last house is a round, dark lake set into a flat green basin — the footprint of an extinct volcanic vent, ringed by hills on three sides. Its water is fresh and clear; the depth has been estimated at more than fifty metres.
What gives the lake its fame are three small islands of matted vegetation that drift across its surface. They carry a few stunted ash trees and a thatch of marsh plants whose root mats hold them together. Lacking any anchor to the lake bed, the islands move with the wind, settling against one shore at dawn and another at dusk. Visitors who return on a different day find them rearranged. The Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks now protects the site as the Floating Islands Nature Monument.
Featured · The Floating Islands
A drift visible only with patience
According to records kept by the Bingöl Branch Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks, around 8,500 visitors reach the lake in the first half of any year — most of them domestic, with a slow-growing trickle of foreign travellers among them. Drone time-lapse footage, increasingly common online, has done more for the site's reputation than any tourism campaign: the islands' motion is too slow to see in real time but unmistakable in compressed minutes.
The best months are late spring through early autumn, when the islands are bright green with growth. Local guides advise an unhurried visit — an hour or two on the bank, watching the wind change.
iii.A Long History at the Crossroads
The province's history runs back roughly seven thousand years. Excavations at Murat Höyük, the small mound near Solhan, have found Bronze Age occupation continuous into the Iron Age, with metalwork echoing Urartian style during that kingdom's height — roughly 860 to 590 BCE. The Hittites pushed east through the area in the fourteenth century BCE; the Urartians moved in from the Van basin after the Hittite collapse and built fortresses along the Murat to guard the high pastures.
After Urartu fell in 612 BCE the plateau passed in turn to Persians, to Alexander's brief empire, to the Seleucids, to a short-lived Commagene reach northward. Roman legions arrived in the first century BCE; the Roman fortress town in the area is sometimes identified as Citharizum. In the early Middle Ages the Byzantines knew the city as Romanoupolis, after the emperor Romanos I Lekapenos who incorporated it in 942 CE. The fortress beside the Murat River — what local memory long called simply "the city's castle" — sits on foundations that thread back through all of these layers.
The Battle of Manzikert was fought in 1071 just east of here, near modern Malazgirt, and opened Anatolia to the Seljuks. From the thirteenth century until 1864 the area was governed in practice by the Kurdish Suveydi dynasty, autonomously for much of the period and, after Sultan Selim I's victory at Çaldıran in 1514, under Ottoman suzerainty. The provincial centre was known as Çapakçur, then briefly Cebelü Cur in medieval Islamic sources, and from 1945 by its present name.
The mountains that gave the province its name
| Peak | Elevation |
|---|---|
| Bingöl Dağı | 3,250 m |
| Genç Dağı | 2,940 m |
| Şeytan Dağı | 2,906 m |
| Şerafettin Dağı | 2,544 m |
Planning an actual trip? Our sister site ILoveTurkey.com has the practical guide — getting there, where to stay, how many days, when to go.
iv.Visiting Today
Bingöl is one of the least-visited provinces in Türkiye and feels it. There is no airport in the city; most travellers fly into Elazığ (ELG), Diyarbakır (DIY), or Muş (MSR), and continue overland along the well-paved D300 (Elazığ–Bingöl–Muş) or by long-distance bus. The city has spread out from its old valley quarter onto a flat shoulder above the Çapakçur stream since the 1950s, and feels modest, ordered, and notably quiet for an Eastern Anatolian provincial capital.
When to go
Late June through early September. Days are warm, nights cool, the high meadows green. A pre-dawn drive up toward Karlıova between 15 July and 15 August catches the sunrise that local people have always insisted is the right reason to come.
How long
One full day is enough for the floating islands and a wander through the city centre. Two days lets you reach Karlıova at dawn and explore the Murat River valley toward Genç.
Where to stay
City-centre options are functional rather than charming. Many travellers base themselves in Elazığ, where the choice is wider, and day-trip into Bingöl. (Booking-card placeholder — production site links partner hotels.)
What to combine
Bingöl pairs naturally with the Eastern Anatolia loop — Erzurum, Erzincan, Muş, Bitlis, Lake Van. A quiet stop on a long, ambitious route.
The province's eight districts
Beyond the central city, the province breaks into seven outlying districts: Adaklı, Genç, Karlıova, Kiğı, Solhan, Yayladere and Yedisu. Karlıova holds the highest country, Solhan the floating islands, Kiğı a small Akkoyunlu-era mosque from 1401–02, Yayladere a Genoese-era hilltop fortress, and Yedisu a pair of waterfalls in the village of Şen and the Perçivenk valley.
Sources
- T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı — Bingöl'ün Tarihçesi
- T.C. Bingöl Valiliği — Bingöl İli Tarihçesi and the 2025 İl Tanıtım Broşürü
- GoTürkiye — Bingöl destination page
- Daily Sabah — Bingöl's floating islands mesmerize nature lovers in eastern Türkiye
- Encyclopædia Britannica — Bingöl
- Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks — Floating Islands Nature Monument designation
- TÜİK ADNKS, 2023 figures
- Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (seventeenth century, retold)