Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi

In 1972 Barış Manço put together a band to play behind him on record and on stage, and named it Kurtalan Ekspres, after the train that ran from Haydarpaşa in Istanbul to Kurtalan, a small town at the far end of the line in Siirt province. Ahmet Güvenç, its bass player since 1976, gave the reason years later: the band toured the whole of Turkey, just as that train crossed it. "Our fates were the same."

The train still runs. The Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi — the Southern Kurtalan Express, cut back to start from Ankara when the high-speed line to Istanbul was built — leaves Ankara Gar at 11:20 five days a week, with Pullman seats, couchettes, sleeping cars and a dining car, and takes about twenty-seven hours over some 1,200 kilometres. As far as Yolçatı, near Elazığ, it keeps to the Van Gölü Ekspresi's path. There it turns south, past Lake Hazar and down the valley where the Tigris begins.

At ten to ten the next morning it is in Diyarbakır, the city known in Turkish as Kara Amid, Black Amid, for its walls: 5.8 kilometres of dark basalt above the Tigris and the Hevsel Gardens, a World Heritage Site since 2015. Most passengers get off here. The train goes on through Batman, the oil town, and reaches Kurtalan a little after two.

The locomotive is usually a DE 22000, one of 86 diesels built by TÜLOMSAŞ under licence from General Motors — red, with a white stripe, pulling the blue-and-white coaches the eastern sleepers share. The Pullman cars are laid out two-and-one, the couchettes sleep four to a compartment, and a sleeping-car room has two beds, a table, a small fridge and a washbasin. The dining car serves breakfast, soup, hot dishes and sandwiches.

The first day

Out of Ankara at 11:20 the train runs east to Irmak, where the line to Zonguldak leaves, and Kırıkkale, then crosses the steppe for most of the afternoon. Kayseri comes at 18:43 and Sivas at 22:29, where the train waits a little under half an hour. The night is spent crossing the plateau south to Malatya, reached at 03:22.

The second morning

At 06:05 the train is at Yolçatı, the junction near Elazığ where the Van Gölü Ekspresi, on its days, goes east for Tatvan. This train turns south through Uluova and Kürk, and at Sivrice and Gölcük, around seven, runs along the southern shore of Lake Hazar. Beyond Gezin it drops into the valley of the Maden Çayı — the Tigris in its first miles — past the old copper town of Maden (07:48) and Ergani (08:24), and out onto the lava plateau of Diyarbakır. It stands at Diyarbakır from 09:50 to 10:12.

The last four hours cross the Tigris plain: Bismil, then Batman at 12:25, then past Beşiri to Kurtalan, 14:10. The line was begun towards Van and the Iranian border, and stopped here when the route east was moved to Elazığ. The next step is shorter: an extension of 34 kilometres to Siirt, with six tunnels, went out to tender twice in 2025.

Coming back

The westbound train leaves Kurtalan at 09:20 and Diyarbakır at 13:29, so the Tigris valley and Lake Hazar pass in the afternoon. It is at Yolçatı at 17:24, Sivas soon after one in the morning, and back in Ankara at 12:45.

One train a day in each direction, five days a week, all year. It leaves Ankara on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and Kurtalan on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Times are TCDD's own, as of September 2026; the train reaches Diyarbakır and Kurtalan the day after it leaves Ankara.

Ankara → Kurtalan · train 22014

Kurtalan → Ankara · train 52013

That is 22 h 30 from Ankara to Diyarbakır and 26 h 50 to Kurtalan; about 27½ hours the other way.

• The Van Gölü Ekspresi keeps the same times as far as Yolçatı on the days this train does not run — from Ankara on Tuesdays and Sundays — so there is a train out of Ankara towards the east every day.
• Between Diyarbakır and Batman a regional train runs twice a day each way, every day: Diyarbakır 08:40 and 18:00, arriving Batman 10:46 and 20:06; Batman 05:30 and 15:00, arriving Diyarbakır 07:38 and 17:08.
• The Turistik Diyarbakır Ekspresi, a sleeper-only tourist train with long daytime stops, ran in the springs of 2024 and 2025, eight departures a season. It has not run in 2026, and TCDD says it is still gauging demand.
• Travel advice. In September 2026 the UK Foreign Office advises against all travel within 10 km of the border with Syria, and nowhere on this line is near it. Check your own government's advice before you go.

The timetable and live running are on TCDD Taşımacılık's Trenim Nerede page (opens in a new tab), where each station's board lists the train and its stops.

Tickets are sold by TCDD Taşımacılık, on its booking site and app and at station ticket offices, for any stretch of the line — Ankara to Diyarbakır is the journey most people buy. There are three ways to travel: a Pullman seat, a berth in a four-person couchette, or a two-bed sleeping-car room. Ankara to Diyarbakır costs 815 TL in a seat, 1,480 TL in a couchette and 3,065 TL in a sleeper; to Kurtalan it is 880, 1,545 and 3,130 TL. Discount fares do not apply in the sleeper.

The train is on the move for a whole night, so the sleeper is the one to book: a room of your own, with two beds, a table and a washbasin. Checked in September 2026.

A pass covers this train. Turkey is in the Interrail and Eurail area, and Interrail's table of railway companies lists TCDD Taşımacılık's main-line and night trains among what a pass includes, and excludes neither. Ask TCDD at the ticket office what a pass holder pays for a couchette or a sleeping-car room before you rely on it.

For this journey on its own a pass is not worth buying. It earns its keep on a longer trip that also takes in the Doğu Ekspresi to Kars and the high-speed lines west from Ankara to Istanbul and Konya. Checked against Interrail's railway-companies table, last updated 28 August 2026, in September 2026.

Almost everything worth the journey is in Diyarbakır, and most of it is inside the walls of Sur, the old city, or on the river just below them. The station is in Yenişehir, the newer town, less than two kilometres west of the walls. Malabadi is a day out by road.

In Diyarbakır the choice is between the old city and the new: inside the walls of Sur for the mosques, the hans and the breakfast, or in the newer districts near the station, where the big hotels are. In Ankara, Ulus puts you a short ride from Ankara Gar for the 11:20 departure.