Roofing in Turkey

Turkey bridges Europe and Asia and holds some of the oldest roofing evidence anywhere, from the Neolithic settlements of Anatolia to Byzantine and Ottoman domes. Its roofing climates range from the wet Black Sea coast to the Mediterranean and Aegean shores and the dry, cold-wintered plateau of central and eastern Anatolia, and much of the country is highly seismic.

Climate and hazards

• Black Sea coast: the wettest region, where pitched roofs with wide eaves are traditional.
• Aegean and Mediterranean coasts: hot, dry summers and wet winters; clay tile roofs predominate in older towns.
• Central and eastern Anatolia: low rainfall, hot summers and cold winters, where flat earth roofs were the vernacular norm because timber was scarce.
• South-east (Harran plain): extreme summer heat, answered with thick mud-brick domes.
• Earthquakes: seismic risk is high across much of the country, so the weight of a roof and its connection to the structure matter. Heavy earth roofs and poorly tied roofs are known vulnerabilities.

Roofing history

Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Göbekli Tepe, near Şanlıurfa, has monumental round-oval and rectangular enclosures with T-shaped limestone pillars up to 5.5 m (18 ft) tall, built by hunter-gatherers between about 9600 and 8200 BC. Whether the enclosures were roofed has been debated: a 2023 review in Open Archaeology notes that arguments first made in a 2011 critique, including that the buildings were roofed, have gained acceptance. Recent excavations have also found what appear to be domestic buildings.

Çatalhöyük. On the Konya plain, the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük (eastern mound about 7400-6200 BC, per UNESCO) had mud-brick houses packed together without streets. People walked across the flat roofs and entered houses through roof openings by ladder; the roof opening also let out smoke, and communal ovens were later built on the roofs. Up to 18 building levels accumulated as houses were rebuilt on their own rubble. See catalhoyuk-roofs.

Ancient tiles. Fired clay roof tiles spread from mainland Greece to western Asia Minor within about fifty years of their first use near Corinth around 700-650 BC, making the Aegean coast of modern Turkey one of the earliest tiled regions in the world.

Assyrian-era domes. Assyrian reliefs of the 7th century BC show domed buildings similar to the beehive houses still seen at Harran.

Byzantine and Ottoman domes. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, completed in 537, set a model for domed roofs. Ottoman imperial mosques are built around a central dome supported by semi-domes; their domes are typically covered in lead sheet, giving them their grey colour, and topped with a finial.

Modern. Reinforced concrete frame buildings now dominate, with either flat roofs or timber-framed pitched roofs.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• West and north: houses on the Aegean, Marmara and Black Sea coasts traditionally have hipped roofs of curved or interlocking clay tiles with wide eaves; the timber-framed Ottoman houses of Safranbolu are a well-known example.
• Central and eastern Anatolia: flat roofs of compacted earth over timber poles, rolled after rain to keep them watertight.
• Kırlangıç kubbe ("swallow dome"): a corbelled timber lantern roof, the Turkish relative of the Georgian darbazi and Armenian glkhatun.
• Harran kümbet: conical mud-brick domes with walls 50-60 cm (20-24 in) thick and domes 20-30 cm (8-12 in) thick, vented at the top; 2,760 were counted in 2002. See harran-beehive-houses.

Roofing today

New buildings are mostly reinforced concrete, with flat roofs or timber-framed pitched roofs covered in clay tile, metal sheet or bituminous shingle. Turkey is also a significant source of water reed for thatching: much of the reed used on British thatched roofs is imported from Turkey and other countries.

Codes, standards and regulation

Seismic design is governed by the Turkish Building Earthquake Code of 2018 (Türkiye Bina Deprem Yönetmeliği, TBDY 2018), which replaced the 2007 earthquake regulation.

Industry

The reed export trade supplies thatchers in north-western Europe.

Notable roofs

• Çatalhöyük (UNESCO): Neolithic roof-entry houses; modern shelter roofs now protect the excavations.
• Göbekli Tepe (UNESCO): debated roofed enclosures of the 10th-9th millennia BC.
• Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, 537): see hagia-sophia-dome.
• Ottoman mosques: lead-covered central domes with semi-domes.
• Harran: beehive-domed houses on the Syrian border.
• Safranbolu: Ottoman timber houses with tile roofs.

Local roofing terms

• çatı - roof
• kümbet - domed beehive house (Harran)
• kırlangıç kubbe / kırlangıç örtü - corbelled "swallow" lantern roof

Sources and gaps

National data on current roofing materials, roofing manufacturers and roof-specific standards: published information is limited.