ANKARUNNING Taking Ankara's Streets One Race at a Time

There is a particular irony in the fact that one of Turkey's most dynamic capitals had, for years, kept its residents largely off its own streets. Seasonal extremes, limited road infrastructure, and a culture that had not yet fully embraced outdoor running conspired to keep Ankara's athletes indoors or sidelined. Then, in August 2014, Çağrı, the founder of ANKARUNNING, decided that was no longer acceptable. What began as a deliberate challenge to those barriers has grown into one of the Turkish capital's most recognisable running communities, gathering people from vastly different walks of life under a single, straightforward idea: get out and run. The story of ANKARUNNING is, in many ways, the story of a city catching up with itself. Ankara is a place that moves fast, politically, economically, and socially. Yet its pavements and trails were slow to fill with recreational runners. The climate plays a role: harsh winters, scorching summers, and the particular unpredictability of Central Anatolian weather make outdoor exercise a commitment rather than a casual habit. ANKARUNNING did not pretend those conditions do not exist. Instead, the crew built itself around the understanding that showing up anyway, together, makes the difference between a sport that feels inaccessible and one that becomes a weekly anchor.

A Community Across Every Background

Walk up to an ANKARUNNING group run and the range of faces tells you immediately that this is not a club designed for a specific type of person. Students in their late teens line up beside retirees. Office workers adjust their laces next to housewives. Amateur athletes who have just discovered the sport warm up alongside professionals who have spent years chasing personal bests. The age range stretches from 17 to 45, and the crew wears that breadth as a point of genuine pride. Running, as ANKARUNNING frames it, is not a performance reserved for those who already know they are fast. It is a practice open to anyone willing to put on a pair of shoes and commit to the road. That philosophy shapes everything from the tone of a Sunday morning to the way the crew communicates with its members. Pace conversations are secondary to participation conversations. The question is rarely how fast you can go and more often whether you will show up. Over the years, that consistency of invitation has done more to grow ANKARUNNING than any single event or achievement. It has created a community where running is the entry point, not the qualification.

Sunday Mornings at Eymir Lake

Every Sunday, at 07:50 in the morning, ANKARUNNING gathers at Eymir Lake. For those unfamiliar with Ankara's geography, Eymir sits on the city's southern edge, a natural reservoir surrounded by trails that offer a genuine escape from the urban density. The early hour is intentional. Getting to the lake before the heat builds, before the weekend crowds arrive, before the day absorbs everyone back into domestic schedules, gives the run a quality that is hard to replicate at other times. The air is cooler. The light is different. The city feels briefly postponed. Eymir Lake has become synonymous with ANKARUNNING's weekly rhythm in a way that goes beyond logistics. It is where the community renews itself. First-timers who show up nervous find that the setting does some of the work for them. The lake path, the sound of water, the familiar faces assembling gradually from 07:50 onward, all of it creates an atmosphere that feels established and welcoming at once. Regulars know the route. New arrivals are folded into the group without ceremony. That ease of entry, week after week, is one of the reasons ANKARUNNING has sustained itself across more than a decade.

Racing Together Across Turkey and Beyond

The Sunday runs are the heartbeat, but the race calendar is where ANKARUNNING's ambitions become most visible. The crew participates in more than 30 races every year, a figure that reflects both the scale of the operation and the competitive drive that runs quietly through its membership. These events span the length and breadth of Turkey, and they reach beyond it. International races have become a regular feature, with members travelling together to compete abroad, turning what might otherwise be solitary athletic endeavours into shared experiences that deepen the bonds formed on the Eymir Lake path. The crew's approach to racing is notably goal-oriented without being exclusionary. ANKARUNNING is genuinely invested in helping members reach personal targets, whether that means finishing a first 5K or qualifying for a major marathon. Çağrı and Burak, who serves as captain alongside him, take that commitment seriously. Support around race preparation, training guidance, and the collective energy of turning up to the start line as a group rather than alone are all part of what the crew offers. The goal, as the crew articulates it plainly, is not simply to attract people to running but to draw them into the race itself. There is a meaningful difference between the two, and ANKARUNNING understands it.

Running as a Act of Civic Reclamation

There is something quietly political about a running crew that forms specifically because the streets of its city are underused. Every time ANKARUNNING laces up and heads out into Ankara's neighbourhoods, along its lakesides, through its parks, it is making a small but cumulative argument that these spaces belong to the people who live in them. The crew has been making that argument since August 2014, and the running landscape in Ankara looks different today than it did then. The sport has grown faster in Turkey over the past decade than in almost any comparable country, and crews like ANKARUNNING have been part of the reason why. That growth does not make the original motivation obsolete. If anything, it sharpens it. There are still people in Ankara who have never considered running as something available to them. There are still seasonal conditions that make it easier to stay inside. There are still roads and trails that feel unfamiliar and slightly forbidding to the uninitiated. ANKARUNNING continues to address all of that, not through campaigns or slogans, but through the simple, repeated act of gathering at a lake on Sunday morning and inviting anyone who wants to join.

Finding ANKARUNNING

Anyone interested in joining can find ANKARUNNING through the crew's website at ankarunning.com or follow their activity on Instagram at @ankarunning. The Sunday run at Eymir Lake starts at 07:50, and showing up is the only formality required. More than a decade in, the crew still runs on the same founding logic: the more people on the road, the better for everyone. That logic has not aged a day.