In Turkey, the Bus Is Really the Only Way to Fly

“Honored passengers,” the audio system says, “this is Capt. Ahmet Tanoglu welcoming you aboard Varan carrier 678901, departing Ankara at 23:45 hours.

“Assuming weather conditions hold as forecast, we should arrive in Antalya at 7:32 hours local time after rest stops in Afyon and Burdur at 02:30 and 05:00 hours, respectively, for a complimentary tea. If you have any additional questions or requests, please don’t hesitate to call on the steward. And please, don’t take off your shoes.”

The captain speaking is not the pilot of an airliner. He’s the driver of a Turkish bus.

As the captain taxis out of the terminal, a steward in a blue blazer weaves between passengers’ outstretched feet, sprinkling local eau de cologne with one hand and passing a bowl of biscuit snacks with the other.

In fact, across the breadth and width of Turkey, from the flats of Mesopotamia on the Syrian border to the craggy mountains of the Black Sea coast, uniformed drivers with the air of jumbo jet captains chat over intercom systems and obsequious stewards attend to the most finicky passenger’s every need.

Impact of Competition

One reason: competition.

Varan, Ulusoy, Tanriverdi, Selcuk, Kamil Koc, Dadas, Harput Dikici, Zumrut--these are only a few of the 350 private bus companies working out of Ankara’s central terminal alone.

So fierce is competition that most companies have built their own rest houses along their routes and give customers free tea after multicourse dinners.

Some companies have built roadside mosques to capture Muslim travelers who must pray five times a day. Others have installed video sets for an “in-flight movie.”

There is one economic reason for all this competition.

Turks have an avErage annual income of around $1,000. Even the cheapest locally made automobile is $4,000. To fly between Ankara and Istanbul costs $45 at the least.

Inexpensive Fares

Yet a “luxury” bus between those points costs $7. Discount carriers charge about half that. On some favorite routes--Ankara to Antalya, for instance--seats are practically free.

Buses are so cheap that some passengers buy two tickets, so they can stretch out for a snooze across two seats.

But enormous popularity brings its own problems, like the first encounter with a big bus terminal.

Potential travelers are instantly besieged by touts who insistently praise their own lines and abuse every competitor’s reputation. Every line has its own matchbook-sized ticket counter. Ankara has 350 lines.

In almost any major terminal you can see a mustachioed young tout forcibly dragging an ancient gray-beard to a ticket counter. Or two “advertisers” simultaneously cajoling three Japanese and five Germans--in Japanese and German--to take their line, even though it goes East when the travelers intended to go South.

Cool Receptionists

Several larger “luxury service” companies have abandoned the pandemonium of terminals and set up private bus ports on the edge of cities, replete with shuttle services and cool receptionists.

“Luxury” lines are recommended for the foreigner, not only for their rigid on-time departures but because they refuse to stop for any roadside passenger who waves them down, as cheaper companies do.

These downmarket companies tend to pack in as many customers as the bus can hold. This caters to another reason there are so many Turkish bus companies.

Turks dearly love to move as a group. Lone travelers are rare. The phenomenon may be a throwback to their days as wandering nomads from Central Asia.

Not surprisingly, a bus service like this has fostered its own folklore. There are tales of strangers falling in love across a bus aisle, of estranged mates meeting when two buses going in opposite directions stop at the same midnight tea stand.

Not folklore, but fact, is that buses are the biggest death traps on Turkey’s often dangerous roads. No month passes without a report of a bus plunging off a cliff in the fog, or another crushed by an oncoming truck.

Even so, the Turkish bus shows no sign of any loss of passengers, vitality or new ideas.

Varan and Ulusoy, to mention but two, now offer “Vista-Cruise” buses.