Pendik Sahil Parkı

Pendik Coastal Park is a long shoreline park on the Marmara coast in the east of the Anatolian side, running east from the Pendik pier as far as Kaynarca. Pendik has nine kilometres of coast on the Marmara, and the district centre sits only 39 metres above the sea, on the edge of a natural bay. On the sea side the park runs along a walkway protected by rock fill, on the land side through lawns, sports pitches and wooded sections; along the shore there is a lane set aside for cycling and running. Opposite lie the Princes' Islands; to the west are Kartal and Dragos, to the east the shipyard and the Tuzla shore. Pendik's name reaches down to the oldest layers of a settlement facing the Marmara. The earliest known name is Pantikapeon; in the Roman and Byzantine periods Pantichion, meaning "walled on every side", was used, and in the Ottoman period the name took the form Pendik. Locally Pendik has also been called five villages, five capes or five fishing villages. Excavations carried out by Şevket Aziz Kansu in 1961 found pottery with geometric patterns resembling the Fikirtepe culture, bone needles and obsidian tools; the sources speak of traces of settlement here three to four thousand years old. Pendik was held by the Seljuks for a time in 1080-1083, came under Ottoman rule in 1306, and after the Battle of Pelekanon in 1329-1330 the Byzantine attempts to win it back came to nothing. It became a permanent Turkish town around 1400, in the reign of Yıldırım Bayezid, when Abdurrahman Gazi settled here. A small fishing town in the Ottoman period, Pendik suffered three great fires from 1798 onwards; in the fire of 1889 twelve hundred houses and shops burned. After the fire the rebuilding of the town was entrusted to Azaryan Efendi, a member of the Senate; architects and engineers brought from Paris drew the town's first plan, and for this reason Pendik is counted as Turkey's first planned town. The plan works the letter A, the first letter of Azaryan's name, into the centre of the town; Gazipaşa and İsmetpaşa avenues are the two legs of the letter reaching down to the shore, Dr. Orhan Maltepe Caddesi is its stem, and the legs meet in the park in front of the municipal building. As you walk in the coastal park, the points where these two avenues come down to the sea are the ends of that plan. The families who came from Drama and Yanya in the population exchange of 1924 formed the core of the new Pendik. A summer settlement until the 1980s, the district grew quickly after the Pendik shipyard opened on 1 July 1982, and apartment blocks replaced the houses with gardens. Pendik became a district by the law published on 4 July 1987 and began to function on 11 August 1988; today, by population, it is the largest district of the Anatolian side. The history of transport on the shore is old too. Pendik station was opened in the early 1870s by the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works; it was rebuilt in 1936, switched to the electric suburban line in 1969, and was closed for the Marmaray in 2013 and reopened on 12 March 2019. Today the Marmaray and the high-speed trains to Ankara, Eskişehir, Konya, Karaman and Sivas stand side by side in the same station. On the sea side, the Pendik-Eminönü sea-bus line opened in 1998 was later withdrawn; since 2004 a fast ferry has run between Pendik and Yalova. The municipality states that the sea terminals are a hundred metres from the district centre and that the Pendik marina is Istanbul's third largest. In 2024 the transport board of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality decided to open a Tuzla-Pendik-Büyükada sea line to relieve the Bostancı, Maltepe and Kartal piers; the line is operated by passenger boat from the pier in Pendik. To visit the park, walk down to the shore from Pendik station; from the square in front of the pier and the terminal head east, towards Kaynarca. Part of the walkway runs along the boats of the marina, part along wide lawns and sports pitches; the islands stay on your left the whole way. In the afternoon the sun goes down in the west over the islands and Dragos; for the sunset choose the open points of the shore that face west, towards the islands. The park is open ground with little shade in summer; bring a hat and water, while in winter the district's prevailing winds, the poyraz and the lodos, blow hard off the sea. It offers a flat, long line for cycling; the coast road continues west to Kartal and Bostancı and east as far as Tuzla. On weekend mornings runners and anglers are early; for a quiet walk choose a weekday afternoon. Sailing times change, so check the current timetable of the Yalova ferry and the island boat on the operators' websites. For transport, the Marmaray station of Pendik is close to the western end of the park and Kaynarca station to the eastern end. The Pendik station of the M4 metro is north of the district centre; buses and minibuses run from there down to the shore. Sabiha Gökçen Airport is twelve kilometres from the district centre.