Zonguldak is a port on the Black Sea in the Western Karadeniz Region of Turkey. It's a grubby industrial place, mining and exporting coal, with a population of 103,417 in 2020.
Turkey has little coal, oil or gas of its own, and its villages traditionally dwelt in a fug of wood-smoke — or of dry dung fumes when all else failed, which was often the case in the arid, tree-scarce interior. Its reserves were mostly lignite, "brown coal", poor polluting stuff, but in the mid 19th century "hard coal" was discovered in the Zonguldak region. This is what you need to make coke, for steel and glass furnaces, and it could also power the engines of the Ottoman navy. Zonguldak burgeoned into a dusty grubby port, exporting the coal across the Black Sea to mostly domestic markets. (One suggestion for the origin of its name is "Zone Geul-Dagh", a French garbling of Göldağı the mountain above.) The city also made cement and steel. And it manufactured lung disease in industrial quantities, since the natural response of a miner or foundry worker released from his shift into the fresh air is to smoke furiously.
Self-sufficiency trumped environmental concerns throughout the 20th century, but the coalfield is nearing the end of its life, and is of inferior quality to imports. Zonguldak is thus degenerating into a post-industrial brownfield landscape of conveyors, hoppers and railway tracks. You can easily get away into the lush mountains, but it will help if you have an abiding interest in the late-stage coal industry.
Buses from Istanbul run every hour or two and take 7 hours (350 TL); from Ankara they take 4 hours. Operators are Pamukkale, Metro Turizm and Flixbus.
Otogar 📍 the main bus station is by the port. Ferries to this and other Black Sea ports no longer sail.
Zonguldak remains cut off from the national railway network. The north part of the line was restored in 2021, and a regional train trundles four times a day from Karabük, taking 3 hours via Gökçebey, Çaycuma and thirty other little places you've never heard of. Another four trains run part-route on the Gökçebey-Zonguldak section. The south part from Ankara to Karabük might resume once the high-speed railway works around Irmak are complete, who knows.
The railway station 📍 is 500 m south of town centre.
Zonguldak Çaycuma Airport (IATA: ONQ) 30 km east has no scheduled passenger flights.
_Dolmuş_es ply the coast road east to Kilimli and west to Kozlu.
The inland streets are steep, with flights of steps on the side-walks. Alleys following the contour are often rooftops of the houses in the alley below.
Zonguldak and its approach highways have 4G from all Turkish carriers. As of July 2022, 5G has not rolled out in Turkey.
Primary administrative division