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Why Hamsilos Is Not a Fjord

When you turn off the Sinop road towards Ayancık and drop down to Akliman, the forest opens at one point and a narrow, winding arm of the sea appears below.

Radar TürkiyeRadar Türkiye4 Kasım 2026
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Why Hamsilos Is Not a Fjord

When you turn off the Sinop road towards Ayancık and drop down to Akliman, the forest opens at one point and a narrow, winding arm of the sea appears below. The water pushes inland between wooded slopes on both sides and, a few hundred metres later, disappears into the green. This view has been enough for many publications to call Hamsilos a fjord. Yet both the 10th Regional Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks and the Culture Portal say the same thing: Hamsilos looks like a fjord, but it is not one. This article explains where that difference comes from, how the bay was formed and how you can read the traces of that process when you stand on site.

The name and place of a bay

Hamsilos lies on the İnceburun arm, one of the two extensions of the Sinop Peninsula. The other extension is Boztepe, where the city centre sits and which locals simply call the Island. The Culture Portal also notes that the bay is known locally as Hamsaroz. According to the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation note on registered natural assets in Sinop, Hamsilos is a sea inlet of 300 to 400 metres at the mouth of a small stream called Deveci Deresi. The bay is about 14 kilometres from the provincial centre and, together with Akliman Bay to its south, forms part of a single protected area.

The Sinop Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism states that nowhere along the Black Sea coast from Hopa to the Bosphorus are there as many harbours sheltered by coves and bays as in Sinop. The most important bays it lists are İçliman, Dışliman, Akliman and Hamsilos. In other words, Hamsilos is an unusual indentation in a coastline that otherwise runs fairly straight. Part of what makes it so striking is exactly this contrast.

How a fjord forms

To understand the difference, you first need to look at what a fjord is. According to the estuaries tutorial of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fjords are long, narrow, steep sided valleys carved by advancing glaciers. The glacier gouges the land into a deep channel and leaves a shallow, narrow sill near the sea. When the glacier retreats, seawater fills the deep valley. NOAA also explains that the sill prevents the deep, salty waters of the open sea from mixing with the bottom waters of the fjord. That is why stagnant water low in oxygen collects on the floor of many fjords.

In short, a fjord is the work of a glacier. That is also why the examples NOAA lists are places once covered by ice: Norway, Greenland, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Scotland and Alaska. For a bay to count as a fjord, the valley it occupies must once have held a glacier that reached all the way down to the sea. This is exactly the question that separates Hamsilos from the definition.

In Türkiye, the traces of the ice age are found in the high mountains. According to a study on Tekeli Mountain published by Cihan Bayrakdar of Istanbul University, glaciation in Türkiye reached its greatest extent during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 21 thousand years ago. The same study states that the mountain where the Pleistocene permanent snow line dropped lowest in the Eastern and Central Black Sea region is Tekeli Mountain, and that this line lay at 2250 metres. In the valleys of the Kaçkar Mountains the line lies between 2670 and 2780 metres.

Ria, a drowned stream valley

In official texts Hamsilos is described as a ria type coast. A ria is a type of coast formed when seawater floods a river valley. NOAA calls the same structure a drowned river valley and says it forms when rising sea level submerges existing stream valleys. Here it is not ice that carved the valley but running water. The sea arrived later and settled into that valley.

For that to happen, sea level first has to fall. The article on the Sinop Peninsula by Yusuf Mert Üstün of Marmara University recalls that during the Würm, the last glacial period, sea level dropped by about 100 metres. According to the same study, in periods when sea level fell sharply the Black Sea became a lake. While the water stood low, streams cut their beds lower and deeper. When the glaciers melted and the sea rose, the lower reaches of these incised valleys filled with water.

The 10th Regional Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks describes Hamsilos as the more deeply incised parts of the Deveci Deresi valley that were drowned by the rising sea and turned into a harbour. The registration note of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation, on the other hand, says that the lower part of the valley went under water as a result of subsidence on land. The two accounts place their emphasis differently, but what they share is clear: Hamsilos was born when the sea entered a stream valley. Because rias can form both through a rise in sea level and through the sinking of the coast, the two explanations do not exclude each other.

Üstün's article also describes the general look of the peninsula. The north facing slopes of the Küre Mountains to the south are full of deep, narrow valleys opened by streams. Although elevations are low near the coast, this is why the terrain is rugged. Deveci Deresi is one of these short streams with narrow valleys. Hamsilos took its present shape where the mouth of such a valley meets the sea, as the water advanced inland along the valley.

The shape of the peninsula is a coastal story too

Understanding Hamsilos also helps you understand Sinop itself, because the peninsula is from end to end the product of coastal processes. Mehmet Akif Ceylan of Marmara University describes Sinop as the most typical isthmus city in Türkiye. The site of the city is an old tombolo about 1.5 kilometres long, no more than 300 metres wide at its narrowest point and 15 to 20 metres above the sea. A tombolo is a strip of sand and gravel that ties an island to the mainland. The Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism also writes that Sinop Bay formed when an island in front of the coast joined the land.

These two forms, tombolo and ria, show two different faces of the Sinop coast. The tombolo is a landform built from material carried by the sea. The ria is the sea settling into a valley carved by the land. One extends the land into the sea, the other brings the sea into the land. Seeing the narrow neck of the city centre and the narrow bay of Hamsilos on the same day is the easiest way to follow this two way story of the coast on the ground.

A protected landform

The special value of Hamsilos is also secured by official records. According to the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation list of protected sites in Sinop, the Trabzon Regional Board for the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Assets, by its decision of 21.11.1991, designated the area containing Hamsilos as a first degree natural site and the Akliman locality as a second degree natural site. The area was declared a nature park on 24.08.2007. According to the 10th Regional Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks, the park covers 67.9 hectares and is the 22nd nature park in Türkiye.

The Culture Portal states that six endemic plant species, among them the Sinop crocus and the Kastamonu onion, grow in the area and that around 150 bird species use it. Part of this richness also comes from the landform. The narrow, sheltered bay creates a setting different from a coast open to the waves. The forest comes down to the sea and land and water interlock along the valley.

Reading the landform at Hamsilos

When you reach the bay, look first at the shape of the water. Hamsilos narrows from its mouth inwards and winds forward like a stream bed. These bends reveal that the valley flooded by the water was once the valley of a flowing stream. At the innermost end of the bay the sea stops and the valley continues on land as a wooded stream bed. Here there are none of the rock walls rising hundreds of metres straight out of the water that you would find in a fjord. The slopes are low and forested.

Next, notice the height of the surrounding hills. The ridges around the bay are low and covered with pine and broadleaf trees. Instead of the flat floored, U shaped cross section seen in valleys worn down by glaciers, there is a narrower valley left by stream erosion. As you walk towards the long beach of Akliman, you can also see how the coast flattens out again and how abruptly the inlet begins.

When and how to go

Hamsilos can be reached by the minibuses that run between Sinop and Akliman from the city centre. Drivers leave the Samsun to Sinop highway for the Sinop to Ayancık road and from there join the Akliman road. At Akliman there is a day use area with a car park, walking paths, rain shelters and viewing terraces. According to the 10th Regional Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks, nature walks, sightseeing, sport fishing and picnics are permitted in the area.

The best moment to read the shape of the bay is in calm weather when the water is still. Looking from a raised viewpoint shows more clearly how the bay winds like a stream bed. The park is a protected area. Follow the information and warning signs in the area, stay on the paths and do not pick plants. Before you go, check the entry conditions and current rules of use on the Regional Directorate's website.

Calling Hamsilos a fjord is not an ill meant mistake, because the eye really does see it that way. But the real story of the bay is not that of a glacier; it is the story of a stream and a rising sea. Looked at with this in mind, that narrow arm of water turns into a small map of how the Black Sea has changed since the last ice age.

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