Petrol Company Road maps from Turkey

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Petrol Company Road Maps from Turkey

Although split between Europe and Asia, Turkey's downstream petrol industry has much in common with the rest of Europe, even though its oil refining industry has been under the control of a de facto monopoly company, Tüpras. Traditionally the market has been led by a local brand, Petrol Ofisi which was for many years associated with Caltex and was sold by the Government to local investors in 1998. In early 2006 the Austrian company OMV took a 34% stake in the company. Shell and BP also supplied chains of service stations, with Mobil representing the former Standard Oil interests, as elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. The fifth main player was another local company, Turkpetrol, which was controlled by the UK's BurmahCastrol for a number of years, before being sold to Tabas, the local affiliate of Conoco (Jet) in 1996.

As far as maps go, most oil company issues in collections seem to date from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s, when the country was first becoming accessible to self-drive tourists from the main Western European countries. Local cartography predominates, with locally printed maps often being on slightly poorer quality paper than would normally be used elsewhere, although of a distinctly higher quality than in the Eastern bloc countries.

Maps

No maps issued by oil companies are known from before the Second World War.

1955 Petrol Ofisi map of Turkey

1963 Petrol Ofisi map of Turkey

1950s Petrol Ofisi and Mobil Istanbul images courtesy of Dave Leach;
Mobil Turkey courtesy of Jon Roma;
1963 Petrol Ofisi courtesy of Alan Eastlund.

Early 1960s Mobil map of Turkey

1960s Mobil map of Istanbul

The Petrol Ofisi maps date from 1955 and 1963; the latter celebrates its activities since 1941 with a cover design including fighterplans, a tank and road vehicles, as well as a small Caltex logo.
To the right are two Mobil maps, both of which are undated. The Istanbul issue is unusual in that no Mobil logo appears on the front cover, though like the BP Istanbul map below there is a Mobil logo on he rear and stations are marked on the map.

1960 Shell map of Turkey

1961 Shell map of Turkey

Extract from 1961 Shell map of Turkey

1965 Shell strip map of Turkey

The Shell map (above left) dates from 1960 and represents a slight variation from the normal international cover style: the cover itself is of light card pasted over a locally produced map. My copy has two postage-style stamps on the rear to show local taxes have been paid on the map.
The next two images come from the December 1961 map of Turkey, showing how the cover design wrapped round onto the rear cover (which carried the name in Turkish). Internally, a good quality map at 1:1,850,000 marked all Shell stations (which were quite dense near Mersin) and coloured roads according to condition: note how the Eastern branch of E5 is white, signifying a graded or unimproved road. Turkish road signs (which follow the US not European pattern) were shown, as well city plans for Istanbul and Ankara, and a summary of main tourist sights in Turkish and English.
In the mid or late 1960s, Turkish Shell issued a number of strip maps showing main tourist routes. Apart from selected tourist facilities and Shell service stations, these maps showed almost no detail!

1964 BP map of Turkey

Mocamp information from 1965 BP map of Turkey

1966 BP map of Turkey

1967 BP map of Turkey

1960 (?) BP map of Istanbul

Almost uniquely in Europe, BP maps are among the most commonly found ones of Turkey. This is partly due to the relatively small number of companies operating there in the 1960s, but also due to BP's Mocamps. These were large, modern camping sites owned and operated by its subsidiary Kervanseray A.S. (= caravanserai, in English) which had a reputation among European campers for luxury unrivalled almost anywhere else on the continent. BP's road maps gave over the entire reverse side to panels advertising Mocamps, illustrated with colour and black & white photos. A surprising number of tourists drove the long distances across the generally unwelcoming Balkans to reach these fabled Eastern outposts of tourism in the days before cheap air travel made Turkey a commonplace destination. To allow for the maximum space to be given over to describing Mocamps, BP uniquely prepared versions of its Turkish maps in different languages including English and German. The examples are from 1964, 1965 (Mocamp advertising),1966 and 1967. The first map was at 1:2.25mn, with the newer ones at 1:1.85mn - note how the cover size increased twice.
The final map is possibly from 1960 and limited to just Istanbul. Here the descriptions of the city (no mention of Mocamps) are again in English, although the map is in 4 languages and marks BP stations. All the BP maps were prepared locally by M. Kerim Çalapverdi.

1990 Mobil atlas of Turkey

The only relatively recent petrol company map of Turkey known is this atlas of the country produced for Mobil in 1990 (image courtesy of Jon Roma).

In recent years, there has been something of an explosion in car numbers, with numbers almost trebling since the late 1980s. This has led to a rapid growth in the number of service stations, many supplied by smaller independent names, of which OPET, Petline, Bolunmez, Aytemiz, Turkuaz, Tuta, MOil and Delta are among the largest. Several of these have grown substantially by using Iraqi oil imported across Turkey's Southeastern land border. The French companies Total and Elf (now merged) have also entered the retail petrol market. No maps are known from any of these more recent entrants to the Turkish petrol market.

It is far from certain whether other companies, including Turkpetrol and any of the more recent entrants to the market have issued maps. If you have a map from one of these companies, or could send me a scan of such a map, or - better still - the map itself, then please send me an e-mail!