Bandırma

Bandırma is a port city, municipality and district of Balıkesir Province in northwestern Turkey, set on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara in the bay that bears its name. Its district covers 755 square kilometres and held 167,363 people in 2024. The coastal land is quite flat, with low hills rising to the south, and Lake Kuş, also called Lake Manyas, lies south of the district; the surrounding bird sanctuary was declared a national park in 1959 and joined the Ramsar Convention list in 1998. The settlement was known in antiquity as Panormos, meaning safe harbour, in the region of Mysia, and tradition places its founding between the 8th and 10th centuries BC, though no exact date is known. Today Bandırma has the fifth-largest port in Turkey and the second largest on the Marmara after Istanbul, serves as the logistics hub of the Turkish boron industry, and has a climate described as hot-summer Mediterranean.