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The Isparta Rose and Rose Oil

Anyone who arrives in Isparta at the end of May gets to know the city by smell before sight.

Radar TürkiyeRadar Türkiye4 Kasım 2026
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The Isparta Rose and Rose Oil

Anyone who arrives in Isparta at the end of May gets to know the city by smell before sight. The pink roses that bloom in the gardens of the plain are picked in the early morning and distilled before the day warms up, and that familiar scent settles over the city. Today the Isparta rose is a registered product in official records, and its rose oil is a raw material sought by the world's perfume industry. This article tells how the rose came to Isparta, how it is grown and processed, and where someone who wants to experience the season can look. Our guides are the rose pages of the Isparta Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism and the Governorship of Isparta, the registration documents of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office, and the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam.

A tradition of a hundred years

The page of the Isparta Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism opens with an interesting observation. Rose growing in the city has no history reaching back thousands of years, and the tradition is not even one hundred and fifty years old. While rose farming was unknown in Isparta, it was already practised in neighbouring Burdur and in the Çal area of Denizli. The person remembered as bringing the rose to Isparta is Gülcü İsmail Efendi, who came from Yalvaç and settled in the city. According to the governorship page, İsmail Efendi was born in 1840 and began his commercial life in weaving.

The details of the story are told with small differences on the two official pages, but the main line is the same. In the late 1880s İsmail Efendi learned that a land registry clerk working in the Çal district of Denizli, who had come from the Kazanlak area of Bulgaria, knew how to extract oil from roses, and he corresponded with him. He planted rose seedlings in a garden of thirty decares and built a rose house for distilling. The governorship page writes that in the first attempts only rose water came out of the stills and the oil would not separate. In the end İsmail Efendi took on a rose oil master from Kazanlak and obtained the oil in the fourth harvest year. When people around him saw his success, they too began to plant roses. İsmail Efendi died in May 1915, right in the rose season.

The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam also writes that a rose processing industry was established in the city from 1890 and gradually gained an important place in the urban economy. According to the encyclopedia, the city's economy, shaken by European goods at the end of the nineteenth century, revived with rose growing and carpet weaving.

From garden to factory

The governorship page follows the next period with figures. In 1931 the amount of roses harvested reached four hundred and fifty thousand kilograms, and the roses were processed by the villagers with their own means. In the mid 1930s the foundation of a rose oil factory was laid in the city, and factory production began in 1936. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that rose oil production was organised into cooperatives in 1948. The Directorate of Culture and Tourism and the governorship report that in 1954 nine cooperatives united to form a union of rose growers' cooperatives. Over time this union opened new facilities in places such as İslamköy, Yakaören and Kılıç.

The city's names carry this past too. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam notes that neighbourhood names such as Gülistan, Gülcü and Gülevler show the place of the rose industry in city life. According to the encyclopedia, rose oil holds the most important place in Isparta's exports.

The world's rose oil

Isparta's share of the world's rose oil is cited at a high rate in official promotion. The GoTürkiye page on Isparta writes that Isparta roses provide sixty percent of the world's rose oil. The governorship page states that producers in the city together supply about sixty five percent of the world's rose oil. The two sources may rest on different years and calculations, but both say the same thing. Isparta is one of the few places that come to mind when rose oil is mentioned anywhere in the world.

The identity of the Isparta rose

The plant's name is Rosa damascena. The Directorate of Culture and Tourism writes that this species is also known as the Isparta rose, pink oil rose, oil rose and Damask rose. It is a pink, semi double, strongly scented, thorny and winter hardy perennial whose height varies between one and a half and three metres. According to the directorate, rose oil that meets world standards is obtained from roses grown at one thousand and fifty metres above sea level and higher.

In the records of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office, this family of products is protected under three separate designations of origin. The Isparta Rose was registered under number 83 in 2006, and its registrant is Süleyman Demirel University. Isparta Rose Oil was registered under number 421 in 2019, and Isparta Rose Water under number 899 in 2021. The registrant of both is the Isparta Commodity Exchange. The rose oil document does not draw the geographical boundary around Isparta alone. The Merkez and Ağlasun districts of Burdur, the Dazkırı, Dinar and Başmakçı districts of Afyonkarahisar, and the province of Denizli are also within the boundary. According to the document, the rose likes airy, sunny land and a climate with no frost in spring and with dew at flowering time. Dew increases the oil yield.

From picking to distilling

The registration documents describe the rose season in detail. Flowering begins in low lying places at the end of the first week of May, comes later as the altitude rises, and ends in the high gardens at the beginning of July. During this period of about forty to fifty days, the flowers are picked one by one by hand every morning, in hours that begin with first light and end towards noon. The picked flowers are put into sacks and carried to the factory without delay, because according to the document a rose that is not distilled right after harvest loses much of its oil yield and quality.

The documents describe two ways of production. In the village method, fifteen kilograms of fresh flowers and forty five litres of water are placed in a simple still called an imbik and boiled. Almost no oil comes from this first distillation. The water collected from three separate distillations is distilled again in the still, and only then does the rose oil separate as a thin layer on the surface. In the factory method, stills of usually three thousand litres are used, most of them of tinned copper. According to the document, the sector does not give up copper because the colour of oil distilled in a copper still is associated with high quality. The oil from the first distillation is called first oil or flower oil, and the oil obtained by distilling the remaining water again is called second oil or water oil. According to the document, about one kilogram of rose oil is obtained from three to four tonnes of fresh flowers. The oil is rested in vessels called kumkuma and muskal before it is offered for sale.

The analyses in the rose oil document explain why such a small quantity is so valuable. According to the document, more than four hundred volatile compounds have been found in Isparta rose oil. The backbone of the scent is formed by alcohols such as citronellol, geraniol, nerol and linalool. Fresh oil sometimes looks greenish and turns pale yellow after a while. The document also notes that the oil partly solidifies below twenty degrees and solidifies completely below sixteen degrees.

Rose water is the second product of this process. The Isparta Rose Water document defines it as the colourless, clear or very slightly cloudy aromatic water that remains after the rose oil is separated, with a light rose scent and a characteristic slightly bitter taste. The Directorate of Culture and Tourism also mentions rose concrete, a solid rose oil of creamy consistency and dark colour obtained from fresh flowers with a solvent.

Experiencing the rose season

According to the registration documents, the rose season stretches from early May to early July, and it is at its most intense in May and June. The GoTürkiye page on Isparta lists the places where rose farming is concentrated. The town of Güneykent in Gönen, the town of Senir in Keçiborlu, and the villages of Kılıç, Ardıçlı, Gülköy and Sorkuncak in Eğirdir are foremost among them. According to the same page, visitors can join the rose picking in these gardens, watch traditional and modern rose oil production on site and buy products made from roses.

If you want to see the picking, set out very early in the morning. Picking is done before the day warms up, and by around noon the gardens fall quiet. The harvest season shifts by a few days each year depending on the weather, so follow the official announcements of the area before making your plans. The gardens are the growers' fields, so do not enter without permission and do not damage the branches.

Lavender after the rose

For those who want to stretch the season a little, Keçiborlu offers a second colour. According to GoTürkiye, the lavender grown in the village of Kuyucak in the district has made a name for itself in recent years. Flowering begins in mid June and lasts until mid July, and the harvest begins in mid August. The second half of June is a good time for those who want to see both roses and lavender on the same trip.

A scent to take home

You can tell from the packaging whether the rose water or rose oil you take home from Isparta is registered. According to the registration documents, the logo bearing the words Isparta Rose Oil or Isparta Rose Water and the designation of origin emblem appear on the product itself or on its packaging. The rose water document also says that this logo is applied as a hologram label. Looking for this mark before you buy is the easiest way to choose a product truly made from the rose of Isparta.

Sources

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