DST rules for Istanbul, Turkey

[Peter Ilieve]

> Thanks, but that link says Turkish DST starts at 01:00 GMT (i.e., at
> 03:00 local time) and ends at 01:00 GMT (i.e., at 04:00 local time).
> This agrees with the current tz database.  But Amar Devegowda reported
> that Turkish DST actually starts at 01:00 local time and ends at 02:00
> local time.  Steffen Thorsen of timeanddate.com agreed, and cited
> Turkish newspaper reports from 1996 through 2001.
>
> I'm inclined to go with Devegowda and Thorsen, but what would be
> helpful is an official source (e.g., a citation from Turkish law) that
> says exactly when this practice started.  So far, all we know is that
> the current Turkish practice started before 1996, which is a bit
> vague.

I don't have any authoritative source but I can add a little context
to this. Turkey is attempting to join the European Union (it's listed
as a candidate country on the
<http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/europe/european-union/>
page). This is proving a long and painful process. It may be that
Turkey has officially switched to the EU 01:00 UTC clock change time
recently as part of this EU application process. It may be that the
website is just confused, showing all pages under the european-union
directory as using EU rules even if they don't.

I would also go with Devegowda and Thorsen, mainly on the basis
that I think it's very unlikely that a country that far east
would use 01:00 UTC unless forced to by something like EU rules.
Newspaper reports of 01:00 local time are much more credible.


		Peter Ilieve		peter at aldie.co.uk