For Istanbulites, heavy snowfall is never quite something you expect. Half the time, dramatic weather alerts about an approaching “snowpocalypse” turn out to be false alarms. And so, when snow finally does arrive in earnest, it always catches the city by surprise, whether or not it was all over the news the day before. The city is caught somewhere between disbelief and quiet delight, unsure whether to complain about traffic or to step outside and take in the rare spectacle.
This time, the snowfall coincided with the winter school break. For many families, that meant no early alarms, no rushed breakfasts, no anxious glances at the clock. Children woke up to white windows instead of schedules, and for a brief moment, the city’s rhythm followed the weather rather than daily obligations. In a place that is rarely allowed to slow down, snow still has the power to rearrange priorities.
Snow changes how Istanbul feels. Sounds soften, distances blur, and even familiar streets seem to belong to another city. In moments like these, it is hard not to think of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s "Snow," not merely as a film, but as a mood: suspended time, quiet interiors, and the sense that winter gently pushes us inward, toward reflection rather than movement.
Driving through falling snow has its own rhythm. Windshield wipers mark time, streetlights dissolve into halos, and the city seems temporarily wrapped in a kind of fragile calm. With Islamzade’s "Günah" playing in the background, that calm takes on an emotional depth. The song, whose title means “sin,” is not only about personal remorse, but about the quiet burdens people carry without naming them. Against that soundtrack, snow feels almost symbolic, covering streets and rooftops as if concealing yesterday’s mistakes, offering the illusion of a cleaner beginning.
There has always been a natural association between snow and purity. Winter arrives not only to cool the air but to suggest that renewal does not have to announce itself loudly. Sometimes it arrives silently, softening edges, making even the city’s sharpness look gentler than it really is. Of course, nothing truly disappears. Snow does not erase, it merely delays. But that brief pause can feel like mercy.
And snowfall in Istanbul is never just about the present moment. It awakens memory. Almost everyone in this city has their own “snow story,” usually tied to a particular winter that became part of the city’s unofficial folklore. For one generation, it is the winter of 1987, when the Bosporus was said to have frozen, or at least felt as if it had. For others, it is the heavy snowfall of the early 2000s, when schools were not closed until it was already too late. I still remember walking all the way from Tünel to Nişantaşı as a high school student, through streets that felt more like ski tracks than sidewalks.
Then there was another major snowfall about a decade ago. Just the other day, a friend recalled how he fractured his arm that winter after jumping onto what he thought was a thick pile of snow, only to discover that it was a raised asphalt bump lightly covered in white. And many still remember the surreal, weeklong snowfall of late 2020 and early 2021, when the city seemed to disappear beneath layers of quiet and curfew.
So it is not that Istanbul never sees snow. It does. But whenever it arrives properly, it becomes memorable, not because it is unprecedented, but because it interrupts the city strongly enough to turn into a shared reference point, something we return to in conversation, as if we were all briefly living in the same story.
By midweek, the snow will melt. Traffic will return. Deadlines will reclaim their urgency. But something, a faint memory of the stillness of a city, briefly softened lingers. And perhaps that is the quiet gift of winter: not the snow itself, but the permission it gives us to slow down, to forgive a little more easily, and to begin again, gently.
