A Writer's Guide to Istanbul

Rami Library opened in 2023 in the Rami Barracks, a mid-18th-century Ottoman building restored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It seats 4,200. Besides the Turkish and World Literature halls, it has a manuscripts library and the Beyazıt Research Hall. The F2 Study Hall stays open around the clock, and memberships and hall reservations go through the library's website.

Salt Research keeps more than 100,000 print resources on art, architecture and the city in the former Ottoman Bank building, along with its Photograph and Postcard Archive. One reading hall is open to everyone. The 40-seat hall for in-depth research asks for a free registration. More than two million digitised documents are online. Entry is free, and Salt is closed on Mondays.

The Orient-Institut is a German research institute, and its reference library holds about 50,000 volumes on the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic and Turkic languages and literatures. Any researcher can use it without membership. Bring valid ID and email your book requests the day before. It opens on weekdays and closes on Turkish public holidays. The institute's website is in English, German and Turkish.

The Istanbul Research Institute's library is open to everyone on weekdays. Its Semavi Eyice Library serves Byzantine studies, and the Şevket Rado manuscripts library serves Ottoman studies. Staff fetch books from the closed stacks on a request form, up to ten items at a time. Exhibitions in the institute's gallery are free.

Robinson Crusoe 389 has sold books since 1994 and keeps several English-language sections. High rents pushed it off its old İstiklal storefront, and it now runs on the first floor of Salt Beyoğlu, with a second counter on the ground floor of Salt Galata. It keeps Salt's hours, Tuesday to Sunday.

Homer has traded on Yeni Çarşı Caddesi since 1995, with a focus on archaeology, history and Byzantine studies. Most of the stock is in English. Look for the Loeb Classical Library editions and the shelf of studies on Turkey.

Minoa opened this bookshop and café in a historic Pera building in autumn 2023. In 2025 a 1000 Libraries poll ranked it first among the world's most beautiful book cafés. English gets particular attention on its foreign-language shelves. It is open daily.

Minoa opened its Akaretler store as an independent bookshop in 2014. Three floors hold an 80-seat café-brasserie and a stock that runs from children's books to comics. Minoa was named Bookshop of the Year at the London Book Fair International Excellence Awards in 2023. The store is open daily.

Pandora has sold books since 1991 and keeps an English-language section. Its import service orders foreign books for individual readers. The shop faces the Askeri Müze gate.

YEM has been a specialist bookshop for architecture and design since 1973. Its Kadıköy branch opened in 2023 as a place to browse over tea or coffee and meet the authors and editors behind the books. Bilingual Turkish–English titles from YEM's own imprint share the shelves with other publishers' books.

Kadıköy Municipality runs İDEA Moda as a free workspace for students and freelancers. The name stands for İşlik–Derslik–Etkinlik–Atölye: workshop, classroom, events, studio. The shared work area is open daily except public holidays, and groups can book a meeting hall. Sister spaces run in Acıbadem and Kozyatağı.

Salt's İstiklal building is free to enter. Robinson Crusoe 389 is on the first floor and the Kitchen is on the mezzanine, while the fourth floor holds a permanent Winter Garden. Talks and screenings run in the walk-in cinema. Salt Beyoğlu is closed on Mondays.

Pera Palace keeps an Agatha Christie Room and an Ernest Hemingway Suite. The domed Kubbeli Lounge serves afternoon tea daily, and Agatha Restaurant and the Orient Bar are in the hotel too. Minoa Pera is on the same street.

Chef Maksut Aşkar's Neolokal brings modern technique to local Turkish cooking. It shares the Salt Galata building with the Salt Research halls and opens in the evenings. Book through its website.

This meyhane has operated since 1923, and Turkish poets and writers were regulars. A table is still kept for Atatürk. One of its three floors is given to fasıl, and there is live music every day.

TÜYAP organises this annual fair with the Turkish Publishers Association. About a thousand publishers and NGOs take part, and the program mixes panels and poetry readings with book signings. Each year the fair names an honorary author.

PEN Türkiye was founded in April 1950, and its more than three hundred members write in Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian. Freedom of expression is central to its work. A short-fiction workshop has met at the PEN office for more than a decade, and the İlkyaz platform publishes poems and stories by writers under 35. PEN works mainly in Turkish, though its website has English pages.

Orhan Pamuk created this museum alongside his novel The Museum of Innocence. Its boxes and cases display the objects the novel's characters used, wore, collected or imagined, and an audio guide is available. The museum is closed on Mondays.

The Turkish Publishers Association co-organises the Istanbul book fair and publishes an annual report on the Turkish book market. Its online editing workshops include an advanced course and one on editing children's literature, taught in Turkish.

ANAMED offers fellowships at doctoral, postdoctoral and senior levels for work on Türkiye from the Neolithic through the Ottoman era. Most run a full academic year in residence, and some postdoctoral and senior fellowships last one semester. Scholars of any nationality who are proficient in English are eligible. The centre also holds public lectures.

ARIT's Istanbul branch keeps a library of about 10,500 titles on the Byzantine, Ottoman and modern Turkish periods, with study space and lectures for visiting and local scholars. The annex, which holds the library of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, is open by appointment. ARIT also awards research fellowships for humanities and social-science work on Turkey.

İletişim publishes Turkish and world literature, from crime fiction to the collected works of Oğuz Atay and Yakup Kadri. Its nonfiction covers philosophy, history and gender studies. It also publishes the journals Toplum ve Bilim and Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar.

Metis publishes fiction alongside philosophy and social theory, including the Küçük Filozoflar series. Architecture and urban criticism are on the list too.

RSC Advances is a fully open-access chemistry journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry, with a broad scope that takes in inter- and multidisciplinary work. One of its two editors-in-chief is at Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar University's Kerem Aydınlar Campus in Ataşehir. Preparing an article for RSC Advances

Sait Faik Abasıyanık's mother founded this prize for a published short-story collection in 1955, and the Darüşşafaka Society now runs it with Türkiye İş Bankası and Kültür Yayınları. Writers who have not won before submit a collection from the previous year that has received no other award.

PEN Türkiye gives this award each year on World Poetry Day, 21 March, for a poet's body of work.

PEN Türkiye's annual Duygu Asena Award honours contributions to freedom of expression and women's rights.