Sinop

Greek colonists from Miletus settled the peninsula in the 7th century BC, choosing it for a harbour that offers shelter in almost any wind. Sinope grew into the leading Greek city of the southern Black Sea, minting its own coins, trading grain, timber, salted fish and the red earth pigment known as sinopia, and founding colonies of its own along the shore. Its best-known son is Diogenes the Cynic, born here in about 412 BC, who left for Athens and a life of deliberate poverty.

In 183 BC Pharnaces I took the city and made it the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus; Mithridates VI was born here, and after Rome's victory the town continued as a Roman and then Byzantine port. The Seljuks captured it in 1214, and the Alâeddin Mosque and the Pervane Medrese date from the century that followed, when Sinop was a shipbuilding centre and briefly the seat of a small principality before the Ottomans absorbed it.

Its most remembered modern day is 30 November 1853, when a Russian fleet destroyed an Ottoman squadron anchored in the harbour, an action that helped draw Britain and France into the Crimean War. From 1887 the fortress housed a state prison whose inmates included the writers Sabahattin Ali and Nâzım Hikmet, closed in 1997 and now a museum, and an American listening station operated on the hills above the town during the Cold War. Road building along the coast came late, which left Sinop quieter and less developed than Samsun or Trabzon.

Sinop's identity is maritime and unhurried. Wooden boatbuilding has been practised here for centuries and yards still make small craft by hand along the harbour; fishing families, ferry crews and shipwrights give the waterfront its working character even in the holiday months. The town's other tradition is craft in wood and bone — spoons, model boats and inlaid boxes sold in the courtyard of the medrese.

Black Sea music and dance are less dominant here than further east, but the kemençe, the tulum and the horon appear at weddings and summer festivals, and the region shares the broader Black Sea taste for quick humour and plain speech. Diogenes is the town's adopted emblem, and a statue of him stands in the town.

Daily manners are those of a conservative but easy-going provincial town. People greet strangers, shopkeepers press tea on visitors, and the evening promenade along the harbour is a social institution in which nearly everyone takes part. Summer brings back families whose parents or grandparents left for Istanbul, and the population and mood of the town change noticeably between August and February.

About 57,000 people live in the central district and roughly 220,000 in Sinop province, one of the least populated in Turkey. The walled centre holds the offices, schools and shops, while newer housing climbs the slopes behind the isthmus and spreads along the coast road in both directions.

Fishing and fish processing, small-scale boatbuilding, forestry, farming in the river valleys and the public sector — the provincial administration, a university and hospitals — carry the economy, with summer tourism increasingly important. The province sends more people away than it attracts: young adults leave for Istanbul, Ankara and Samsun, and many houses in the villages are used only in summer, which gives Sinop one of the older population profiles in the country.

The rhythm of the year is set by the sea and the weather: boats out in the dark and fish sold in the morning, quiet wet winters, a crowded summer, and an autumn of preserving and preparing. Recurring local issues are the slow coastal road, the loss of young people, the effect of building on the shoreline, and long-running public debate about a proposed nuclear power station in the province.

Fish leads the table. Hamsi, the Black Sea anchovy, dominates from late autumn to midwinter, fried in a coating of cornmeal, baked with rice or worked into bread; bonito, bluefish, mullet and turbot appear at other times, usually grilled simply and eaten with rocket, onion and cornbread. The harbour restaurants set their menus by what has been landed rather than by a fixed list.

Sinop mantısı is the town's own dish: pasta parcels filled with meat, larger than the tiny Kayseri version, often baked before boiling and served with yoghurt, garlic and melted butter. Nokul, a rolled yeast-dough bread filled with walnuts and raisins, or with cheese or minced meat, is the local baking speciality, sold in the bakeries inside the walls. Corn appears as bread and as kuymak, cornmeal cooked in butter with cheese until it stretches.

The forests and valleys of the province supply the rest: wild mushrooms, chestnuts, walnuts, honey, cranberry-like wild fruits and preserves. Dark cabbage is simmered into soup or wrapped around rice, as it is all along the Black Sea. Tea is drunk continuously, the beans and pickles are home-made, and in cold weather the tea gardens serve salep.