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 established in 1931 and controlled by the UK's BurmahCastrol for a number of years, before being sold to Tabas, the local affiliate of Conoco (Jet) in 1999. Aksoy bought out ConocoPhillips' interest in 2005, but merged the chain into a joint venture Shell just a year later, leading to its 650 stations switching brand.

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.

The first Mobil map is undated, but broadly follows the international style for the early 1960s. Next comes a January 1965 issue that almost loses the Mobil logo through the highly unusual use of a transparent background. This map, at 1:2.2mn, was printed by Apa Ofset Basimevi but credits no cartographer; the reverse side is called "Turkey Land of Sunshine and History", and has large colour photos above English descriptions of key tourist attractions. A 1972 A5 book (centre) is known in both English and German versions. It has 64 pages printed in colour on glossy paper describing the main tourist regions; this is followed by 32 pages of maps, a list of towns with Mobil service stations and a climate chart. The guide was sold for TL 28 or US$2 (English edition) or DM7 (German edition).
The Istanbul issues are unusual in that no Mobil logo appears on the front cover, though like the BP Istanbul map below there is a Mobil logo on the rear. The white cover issue marks Mobil stations on the map; the blue cover issue has a pictorial map inside that would be of little use for drivers and describes principal sights in German.
White cover Mobil Istanbul image courtesy of Dave Leach; early 1962s issue courtesy of Jon Roma

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 followed 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!
These images below are taken from a Shell guide, that appeared as "motorist guide to turkey" in English (in khaki covers), and "strassenführer der türkei" in German (in yellow covers, as shown).

Each paperback consisted of 196 pages of gazetteer, illustrated by line drawings, then 30 pages of town maps (in a semi-pictorial style, as can be seen from the Ankara extract) and 32 pages of regular maps, both marking Shell stations. Both my copies have a rubber stamp indicating the information is accurate as at 1969, and the covers are printed with a price of TL17.50, although the German version is over-stickered "for free distribution" (in English!). My copy of the latter also has a printing error, with several pages unintentionally blank.

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.

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!

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