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When you travel to Turkey, keep this in mind: Turkey is big: 1700 km (1056 miles) from east to west if you travel by road, a trip of several days.

But you can fly from Istanbul (west) to Erzurum (east) in about two hours for a one-way fare of as little as TL70 if you buy your ticket well in advance. (For comparison, a ticket for the 19-hour bus trip costs TL80!) Most other domestic flights cost between TL60 and TL300.

How to Buy Tickets...

Because of the way international airfares are structured, it is usually far cheaper to purchase your Turkish domestic flight tickets on the Internet, or within Turkey, or in advance through a good Turkish travel agency, rather than in your home country. Here's proof.

A good Turkish travel agency can make your flight reservations for you, and send you the electronic ticket info, usually at no charge to you. Here are my recommended travel agencies.

The farther in advance you buy your ticket, the cheaper it is likely to be.

Check airfares here!

Low-Fare Tickets

It's possible to buy low-fare tickets in English on the websites of AnadoluJet, Atlasjet, Borajet, Onur Air, Pegasus Airlines, Seabird Airlines, Sun Express, Turkish Airlines, and several others.

Sun Express, a Turkish-German joint venture, flies from Austria, Germany and Switzerland to Turkey, and within Turkey from İzmir's Adnan Menderes Airport to Adana, Antalya, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Kayseri (for Cappadocia), Konya, Trabzon and Van. More...

EasyJet also flies from the UK to Turkey.

Turkey's International Airports

Most long-haul international flights land at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport, but Sabiha Gökçen Airport, on the Asian side of Istanbul, is the fastest-growing airport in Europe, so you may land there instead.

See my Major Airports in Turkey and Turkish City Airport Codes.

Plane? Train? Bus? Car?

Flying used to be expensive in Turkey, but now with numerous airlines competing for domestic passengers, fares have fallen and are sometimes not much more expensive than the train or bus.

Here are guidelines for when it makes budget sense to fly:

In Istanbul you may prefer a value-for-money private transfer service from either airport (Atatürk or Sabiha Gökçen) to the city center because it's far superior to a taxi, and not much more expensive; and if you have 3 or more people with luggage, it's definitely the way to go. More...

—Tom Brosnahan