After Dark

Tunalı Hilmi, Kuğulu Park and the bars of Bestekar

The capital's polite side — a shopping avenue, swans in a park, and a side street that turns into Ankara's bar strip after dark.

₺₺an eveninglate afternoon walk, then from 9pm on Bestekar

Save for later — join Smileys

Why do it?

Kavaklıdere is embassy Ankara: tree-lined, tidy, expensive by local standards, and the part of the city that feels most like a European capital. Tunalı Hilmi Caddesi is its spine — a mile of shops, cafés and pastry houses that everyone just calls 'Tunalı' — and Kuğulu Park at the bottom is the small, beloved park with a pond and the swans that, the story goes, arrived as a gift from Vienna. Uphill toward Ayrancı the streets become residential and quiet. One block off Tunalı, Bestekar Sokak is where the district drinks: a run of bars, pubs and small music venues that fills every night of the week with diplomats' kids, university lecturers, journalists and the young professionals who make up most of the city. It is where most of our Ankara members already go.

The Smileys Take

Walk Tunalı from Kuğulu up to Kavaklıdere in the last hour of daylight — it is the best people-watching in the city and the easiest way to feel how many nationalities live here. Then pick a bar on Bestekar with tables outside and stay; the crowd is talkative, English is common, and in a small city you'll see the same faces within a month, which is exactly how community forms. Prices are above Kızılay and below Istanbul. Thursday is the local big night. If you want to meet Ankara's international crowd on your first week, this is the street.