Every guide who wears The Other Tour badge has a story that starts long before their first tour — a friendship, a recommendation, a chance meeting in a Sultanahmet stairwell. This is that story, told in the order it happened. We’re building it guide by guide, in the same sequence their profiles go live on the site, so treat this as a running record rather than a finished list — we’ll keep adding chapters as we publish them.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Our Tour Guides
A tour company is easy to describe in terms of itineraries, destinations and prices. But after fifteen years of running The Other Tour, we’ve come to believe that none of those things matter quite as much as the people you put in front of your guests.
And finding the right people has never been a straightforward recruitment process for us.
Some of our guides were old friends. Some were recommended by other guides. Some we met by accident — on rooftops, in cafés, at archaeological sites, outside cruise terminals or in the middle of someone else’s tour. A few found us themselves. Others arrived through an expanding network in which one good person kept introducing us to another.
What began in late 2024 as a simple idea to publish profiles of the guides we trusted has gradually become something much bigger: a record of how The Other Tour’s guide team was actually built.
There are archaeologists, art historians, musicians, translators, photographers, writers and lifelong tourism professionals here. Some have been guiding for four years; others for more than thirty.
They come from Istanbul, Cappadocia, Ephesus, Antalya, Bodrum, Ankara and beyond. They speak English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and Urdu. Some are extraordinary storytellers. Some are walking encyclopedias. Some are simply exceptionally good at reading people.
But this isn’t meant to be a ranking of Turkey‘s best tour guides, and it certainly isn’t a polished corporate team page.
It is a living history of our own little network — who came first, who introduced whom, how we met, what caught our attention, what happened when we finally sent them out with our guests, and how one relationship led to the next.
So here they are, in the order their profiles joined the story.
50+ guides and counting.
Preface: Finding the People Who Find the People
None of the guides on this page assembled themselves into a team.
Behind the friendships, recommendations, Instagram discoveries, café meetings and chance encounters is Fethi Karataş, founder of The Other Tour. Sometimes Fethi, aka Monti, finds the guide himself. Just as often, he finds people who are good at finding people — guides, friends and team members whose judgment he learns to trust, encourages and pays for their scouting work.
That has gradually created something closer to a living network than a conventional recruitment department.
Fethi’s role is difficult to reduce to “travel agent” or “tour operator.” He scouts talent, connects people, creates work, pays guides properly, studies their strengths and tries to put the right personality in front of the right guest. And when somebody proves particularly good at recognizing talent, Fethi encourages that person to start finding guides too.
But recruitment is only one part of the experiment.
Fethi wants The Other Tour to operate increasingly like a small think tank about Turkey. Guides are encouraged not simply to conduct tours, but to document what they learn in the field: observations, historical questions, unusual sites, stories from neighborhoods, archaeological details, photographs and ideas that might eventually become articles, new tours or research projects.
The website itself is part of that system. Fethi regularly prepares or commissions substantial reading for the guides on subjects ranging from the myths surrounding Istanbul’s origins and the Varangian Guard to the deep archaeological layers of Ephesus, the work of archaeologists such as Murat Akman and Mehmet Özdoğan, the Armenian presence within the Byzantine imperial world and the long history of Jewish Istanbul.
The expectation is simple: keep learning, keep questioning and bring something back to the group.
Fethi also approaches tours as a photographer. He frequently joins guides in the field with his camera, not to take over the tour but to observe it — photographing the guests, the guide and the small moments that happen between the official stops. Soon after the tour, those photographs are organized into an album and shared with the guests.
For the clients, it becomes a record of their day.
For the guide, it is also documentation of their work.
And for The Other Tour, every tour becomes a little piece of field research.
That is increasingly the larger idea behind this team: find intelligent people, give them work, give them better material to read, encourage them to document what they discover, put them in contact with one another and let the network become smarter over time.
An archaeologist should make the historians sharper. A Byzantine specialist should give an Ottoman specialist something new to investigate. A photographer should teach everyone to look more carefully. A veteran guide should teach a younger guide how to read people. And the people who become particularly good at finding talent should eventually start building the team themselves.
2024
Late in 2024, Fethi decided to start featuring tour guide profiles on the site — a small, untested idea at the time, with no way of knowing it would grow into a running series. Two names went up before the year was out: Rubil, the brother-from-another-mother whose friendship started the whole agency, and Ömer, whose eye for talent would shape the roster for years to come.
1- Rubil Gündüz, Where It All Began
Rubil Gündüz and Fethi Karataş have been friends for twenty-five years, long before either of them worked in tourism. In 2010, during one of their late-night brainstorming sessions, the two of them sketched out the idea that became The Other Tour. Rubil was the first guide we ever wrote about — before any client review, before any other name on this site.
A graduate of Ankara University’s Italian Language and Literature program, Rubil has guided in Italian and English since 2002 and has led Anatolian tours since 2007. That fluency and two decades in the field made him a natural anchor for everything the agency would grow into.
Rubil’s circle became our circle. His friends Damla Arslan and Tayfun Yalçın joined the team early on, and over the years he pointed us toward Ece Duluk, Kardelen Uyar, and several others who now guide for us.
2- Ömer Çelik, the Talent Scout
Ömer Çelik was already a close friend of Fethi’s when he joined The Other Tour, but the relationship quickly became something more consequential. Originally from Sivas, trained in tourism guiding and increasingly immersed in art history, Ömer arrived with curiosity, warmth and an appetite for learning that Fethi immediately pushed further.
Fethi gave him an enormous amount of work and responsibility, then expected him to grow into it. Ömer did. He became our lead guide in Istanbul, one of our most prolific writers, and perhaps the clearest example of what we want this team to become: a guide who keeps reading, joins senior colleagues on their tours simply to learn, experiments with new routes, and can move comfortably from Byzantine history and archaeology to contemporary art, football, food and nightlife without losing the human connection that makes a tour work.
He also turned out to have an unusually good eye for people. Ömer brought Burak Plakay, Deniz Karagözoğlu and Anıl Yılmaz into our orbit, later recommending others as well. All three became important parts of the story that follows.
So Ömer didn’t simply become one of our strongest guides.
He helped us understand how to find the next ones.
2025
2025 was the year the idea proved itself. The roster grew from 2 guides to 20, built almost entirely through personal networks — friends recommending friends, guides scouting other guides, chance meetings on rooftops and in cafés. Ephesus and Cappadocia became real departments rather than afterthoughts, and by year’s end the pattern was clear: word of mouth was how The Other Tour found its people.
3- Furkan Emre Çapkur, a Hometown Bond
Furkan Emre Çapkur joined us on March 3, 2025, and his contribution went beyond guiding. He edited video content for the website alongside Fethi, learning the production side of the business as closely as the historical one.
He and Fethi share more than a job. Furkan grew up in Bağcılar, Fethi in neighboring Esenler — two kids from the same working-class stretch of Istanbul, long before either of them stood in front of a tour group.
4- Damla Arslan, Our First & Best
Damla Arslan was the first female guide to join The Other Tour (March 12, 2025), and she set a standard the rest of the team has been chasing ever since. A graduate of Boğaziçi University‘s history program with graduate study in cultural heritage at Koç University, she studied Greek and Latin and has worked on archaeological projects across Anatolia, including at Zeugma.
Licensed since 2009, Damla has now guided dozens of tours for our clients, and the feedback has been consistently glowing. Every trip she leads only reinforces why she was the guide who proved the model could work.
5- Ece Duluk & the April Fools' Reveal
Rubil recommended Ece Duluk to us and she joined the roster on Mar 20, 2025. Since then, she has guided many tours for our clients and each client has been quite impressed.
Born and raised in Istanbul, with family roots on Büyükada, she studied tourism guiding at Çanakkale 18 Mart University, holds a master’s in Istanbul Studies, and has been licensed since 2016.
Her best story with us involves Tolga Bensan, who once posed as a Brazilian tourist on her tour for an entire April Fools’ Day — Fethi is generous when it comes to his team’s ongoing education, wherever that education happens to lead. Ece played along beautifully, and the group’s amusement peaked when Fethi revealed the prank inside the Spice Bazaar. Everyone headed upstairs afterward for drinks at Pandeli.
6- Kardelen Uyar, a Guide in Waiting
The very next day (March 21, 2025), Kardelen Uyar came to us through Rubil as well and we published her article. A graduate of Gazi University‘s Travel Management and Tourism Guidance program, she holds a guiding license covering the Aegean, Marmara, Eastern Anatolia, and Central Anatolia regions — four of Turkey’s seven regions in one license.
We haven’t had many chances to put her in front of our clients yet, honestly. We’re looking forward to changing that.
7- Tayfun Yalçın, Too Good to Notice
3 days after Kardelen, we were blessed with an article about a living legend on Mar 24, 2025. Arguably one of the best tour guides in Türkiye — according to his own testimony, delivered with a straight face — Tayfun Yalçın has spent more than thirty years in this profession. He trained at Ege University‘s Faculty of Professional Tourism Guiding and has now marked twenty-five years as a licensed guide.
His forte is prehistory, a subject most tour companies barely touch. Maybe that’s the actual secret here: he’s simply too specialized, too deep into his subject, to get the mainstream attention a generalist would.
8- Said Balcı Opens Cappadocia's Doors
Then we had to wait for a few weeks until May 17, 2025 before we could add another valuable tour guide to our roster. And this time, we were switching gears altogether!
Ömer Çelik introduced Said Balcı into our lives, and that introduction opened our entire Cappadocia department. The two met on a training trip organized by the Turkish government for licensed guides looking to add regions to their credentials — Ömer already held Central Anatolia and Marmara and wanted to add the Aegean, and Said was working toward the very same goal.
Since then, Said has been our eyes and ears in Cappadocia, guiding countless tours for our clients. Born in Istanbul in 1997 to a family from Trabzon, he holds a double major from Erciyes University in Korean Language and Literature and History, plus a master’s in History, and he has guided professionally since 2019.
The only real problem with Said is that clients tend to like him more than they like us — every single time, and it stings a little more with each tour.
9- Duygu Sınırtaş, the Lifesaver on Call
Fethi met Duygu Sınırtaş on the rooftop of Bilgin’s, the shopping store in Sultanahmet, at a meeting of local guides. He was looking for a second archaeologically-trained guide to complement Damla Arslan, whose calendar was often full on exactly the dates our clients wanted her.
Duygu became the answer to that problem on Jul 6, 2025. Born and raised in Istanbul, she studied prehistory at Istanbul University and tourism guiding at Marmara University, and took part in the Tepecik-Çiftlik excavations in Niğde during her studies. She has guided dozens of tours for us, and every single client has come away happy.
10- Burak Plakay, Better Every Year
Burak Plakay is another find we owe to Ömer Çelik, and we’re not sure how we’ll ever repay that particular favor. Fethi was struck by Burak’s energy from their very first meeting, and the two started leading tours and spending time together almost immediately. And we published his article on July 13, 2025.
Born and raised in Istanbul to a proud Albanian family, Burak holds a license for the Marmara region and writes for the blog in addition to guiding. He was excellent in 2025. In 2026, he’s operating on another level entirely, and clients can’t get enough of him.
11- Özgür Varol Opens the Door to Ephesus
Then came the moment to properly establish The Other Tour in Ephesus. Fethi flew down himself and asked his business partner Metin Çobanoğlu to find an excellent guide who could show him the ruins in person. Metin found Özgür Varol.
Fethi took the tour, and the two became friends. From Selçuk, beside ancient Ephesus and south of İzmir, Özgür trained in Travel Management and Tourism Guidance at Adnan Menderes University and holds a national license covering Ephesus, Miletus, Didyma, and Pergamon.
Since that first walk through the Library of Celsus, Özgür has guided dozens of our clients in Ephesus, and every single one comes back raving. He is, simply put, the full package of a professional tour guide.
12- Yeşim Arıcı Deepens Our Ephesus Team
With Ephesus becoming a real focus for us, we also needed strong female representation on the ground. Yeşim Arıcı turned out to be exactly that: a guide who has been accredited by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism since 1988.
She holds an MA in Tour Guiding from Osman Gazi University along with degrees in German Language and Literature, History, and Cultural Heritage and Tourism. Based in Kuşadası and fluent in English and German, she brings more than three decades of guiding experience to every tour she leads.
13- Hatice Kelek, a Family Partnership in Ephesus
Ephesus gave us another excellent female guide in Hatice Kelek, and this one came with a bonus connection. She is the wife of our dear friend Fatih Kelek, who runs his own excellent travel agency, Bonita Tour, out of the Ephesus region — we partner with them regularly on complex operations across western Turkey.
A graduate of Ege University, Hatice is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and trained as a certified yoga instructor, which shows up in her calm, unhurried guiding style.
14- Uğur Kayhan, Another Sivas Connection
Ömer found us another excellent guide in Uğur Kayhan, who — like Ömer — is originally from Sivas. Uğur has helped our team on tours requiring wheelchair assistance, and on others where he guided some remarkably sharp, highly intelligent clients who left thoroughly impressed.
He studied Tourism Guidance at Mersin University, spent a semester in Latvia through Erasmus, and started in tourism at just sixteen, working the counter at Melih Kundura inside the Grand Bazaar before guiding for Jolly Tur and Tatilbudur.com.
15- Doğan Denizdağ, an Old Friend of Metin
Metin Çobanoğlu, our travel agency head, brought Doğan Denizdağ into the fold — the two had already worked together countless times before Doğan joined our world. A 2014 graduate of Ege University fluent in English and Spanish, Doğan is a genuinely great guy.
We rarely get the chance to put him in front of our clients, but we’re always glad when the schedule lines up.
16- Selim Özyürek Answers Cappadocia's Call
By this point, Said Balcı alone couldn’t keep up with demand in Cappadocia, so Said went out and scouted Selim Özyürek himself. Selim grew up among the region’s fairy chimneys and pigeon valleys, studied tourism at Mersin University, and spent several years living in Germany before returning home to guide.
He’s known for arriving on tours with a tablet full of maps and diagrams he made himself, for extending hikes simply because a trail looks inviting, and for carrying a small bag of cat food for every stray he meets along the way. Selim is a great guy — yes, indeed.
17- Deniz Karagözoğlu Moves From Fethiye to Istanbul
Ömer Çelik recommended Deniz Karagözoğlu to us — the two are very close friends. Through 2025, Deniz was our Lycian region expert, working out of his hometown of Fethiye, before packing up and moving to Istanbul in early 2026.
The move has been a huge addition to the team. London-born and a dual UK-Turkish citizen with native English and Turkish, Deniz recently joined the rest of us at an Islandman concert in Istanbul for a proper team-bonding night — Ömer Çelik and his fiancée Senem, our head blogger Shaheer Imran, and Özge Özenç.
18- Ahmet Faik Özbilge, the Guide's Guide
Then we started meeting some real heavy-hitters. Ahmet Faik Özbilge might be the epitome of tour guiding itself — a true gentleman whose reputation becomes obvious the moment you mention his name to any of the dozens of random guides working this city.
One tells you he was a witness at Ahmet Faik’s wedding. Another, Defne Erdoğan, says she still visits his home for study sessions. He’s a guide’s guide, the kind of person who looks after everyone in the industry, whether or not they’ve ever worked together. And we published his article on November 8, 2025.
Born in Istanbul in 1965 and educated at Galatasaray High School before switching from chemical engineering to sociology at Boğaziçi University, Ahmet Faik earned his guiding license in French at just twenty-two and has now spent more than thirty years in the field. Between October 22 and 25, he’ll guide us through the Lycian region alongside the Turkish legend Fahri Işık — a deep multi-day trip we’re taking as a full Other Tour team, with Ömer Çelik, Deniz Karagözoğlu, Fethi Karataş, and Özge Özenç along for the journey.
19- Ezgi Tilki Brings Energy & Warmth
Ezgi Tilki isn’t a fan of guiding large groups, but everything else about her has been excellent. She’s warm, generous with her time, and brings real photography skills to every tour, born and raised in Istanbul with a national license covering all seven regions of the country.
She has guided many tours for our clients, and every one of them has come away happy.
20- Enis Aköz, Our French Connection
Then we found another heavy-hitter — this time in the world of French. Enis Aköz finally gave us our own French Connection on Dec 8, 2025, and he’s exactly as good as that sounds.
Born in Istanbul in 1958 to a family that has lived in the city for five generations, Enis is a Galatasaray High School graduate who has designed and led private tours across Istanbul and Anatolia for more than twenty years. Between his passion for fishing, his eye for photography, and his parallel career as a book translator, we consider ourselves lucky to be working with him.
Twenty guides down, and the team was already taking shape: archaeologists, veterans, regional specialists, multilingual guides and younger voices, all connected through friendships, recommendations and chance encounters.
But twenty was only the beginning. The next wave would bring even more range — academics, writers, photographers, musicians, translators and specialists across new regions of Turkey. The goal was no longer just to find knowledgeable guides, but people with personality, curiosity, depth and the ability to truly connect with guests.
20 proved the idea worked. The next 35 showed how far it could grow.
2026
In 2026, the search stopped being incidental and became a real operation. Özge Özenç joined the team in May and, during her time with us, helped turn what had largely been an informal network of introductions into a more deliberate scouting effort. She left The Other Tour in early August, but the search continued — with Shaheer, Ömer, Begüm and Fethi all finding and meeting new guides in their own ways.
21- Zeynep Karakaşoğlu, Beyond The Byline
We found Zeynep Karakaşoğlu the way half of our team finds each other these days — on Instagram. Fethi came across her page, got pulled in by her posts on Istanbul, and connected with her there. It didn’t take long to realize this American-Turkish former journalist had already traded her press pass for a guiding license, and one conversation later, she was part of the team.
22- Binnur Eren Kurtoğlu, A Hippodrome Interruption
Fethi met Binnur Eren Kurtoğlu at the Hippodrome, mid-tour, while she was guiding a guest in a wheelchair through the old city. He interrupted just long enough to get her number — accessibility-assisted tours are a real focus for The Other Tour across the country, and a guide who handles them with that much care and patience isn’t someone you let walk away.
Binnur has been working in tourism for about a decade, first as a group leader across Turkey before earning her guiding license from Cappadocia University in 2022. Since then she’s built a particular reputation for food tours — the kind built on neighborhood spots rather than photogenic ones — and for a calm, steady style that guests describe as more like spending the day with a local friend than following an itinerary. She’s since guided many tours for our clients, and every one of them has come back happy.
23- Tolga Bensan, A Chance Café Meeting
Fethi met Tolga Bensan entirely by accident at Palatium Café in Sultanahmet, built above the fifth-century Roman palace of Magnaura. What started as a random conversation over coffee turned into one of the more valuable friendships on the team, and it wasn’t long before Tolga was guiding for us regularly.
Tolga holds a country-wide guiding license, was born in Kadıköy, and is — by his own admission and everyone else’s — a bit of a fancy pants, the grandson of a former Turkish Consul General in the United States. He’s already guided more than a dozen tours for our clients, often alongside Ömer Çelik, Burak Plakay, and Ece Duluk. And like Ömer before him, Tolga turned out to be a talent scout in his own right, bringing the next two names on this list into the fold.
24- Ebru Gökteke Raises The Bar
Through Tolga, we found Ebru Gökteke, a scholar-guide who studied English Literature at Boğaziçi University before moving through journalism, magazine editing, and eventually two graduate degrees — History of Religions at Marmara University and Art History at Istanbul University, where she specialized in Christian iconography. She’s been guiding professionally since 2002.
Ebru is best known for her deep-dive lectures on subjects like the iconography of the Chora Church, and she runs a disciplined room — guests are expected to give her their full attention and save their questions for the end. She isn’t cheap to book, roughly three times the going rate, but no one on the team has ever regretted the splurge.
25- Defne Erdoğan Joins Through Tolga
You’ve already seen her name once in this story — Defne Erdoğan is the guide who still visits Ahmet Faik Özbilge for study sessions at his home. She’s also a close friend of Tolga’s, and it was his introduction that brought her onto the team. She guides in both French and English, holding a background in French Literature and a master’s degree in Tourist Guiding.
What stands out most to us is how Defne treats a tour day: she loves sitting down with clients for dinner afterward rather than rushing home, which is exactly the kind of engagement The Other Tour values. Guests consistently describe her as warm, funny, and effortlessly good company.
26- Tarık Alabaş Answers The Call
As demand in Cappadocia kept growing, word went out through local contacts that we were looking for more top-tier guides in the region. Tarık Alabaş was one of the names who answered — a licensed National Tour Guide who has called Cappadocia home since 2004, when he moved there to study at Erciyes University’s Tourist Guiding Department.
Before guiding full time, Tarık spent years in premium hospitality, and it shows in how he hosts: patient, warm, and endlessly attentive to the small things that make a long day in the sun easier. He has a soft spot for the valleys most tour buses skip entirely, and he’ll happily trade a famous viewpoint for a quiet path only the locals know. We’re proud to have him on the roster.
27- Esra Koçak Meets Us At Moda
Esra Koçak reached out to us herself, and Fethi met her for a conversation at the library inside Moda Pier, right on the water, with Tolga along that day too. Both of them left convinced her energy was exactly what the team needed, and the partnership was set in motion from there.
Esra’s own path to guiding wound through Afyonkarahisar, where she was born, and Cappadocia, where she studied at Nevşehir University before working her way up through hotels in Nevşehir and Kuşadası. She later spent a year sharpening her English at a Hyatt property in New Orleans before settling in Istanbul in 2022 and earning her license. She’s already guided her first tour for our clients, and by every account, they couldn’t have been happier.
28- Mert Pamukcu Turns Up the Beat
Like Tarık, Mert Pamukçu answered our call for more guides in Cappadocia, and he brought something the team didn’t know it was missing: two decades as a working musician alongside his years as a licensed guide.
Mert has a habit of closing his tours with an impromptu performance, and more than one guest has ended up on stage beside him by the end of the night. He guides comfortably in both English and Russian, and he treats every ruin and cave church the way he treats a set list — building toward a moment his guests won’t forget.
29- Kağan Özşakacı Leads Us Through Antalya
Fethi spent close to three months living in Antalya, using the time to focus the team’s attention on the Mediterranean. His very first tour there ran through Perge, Aspendos, and Side, and his guide that day was Kağan Özşakacı — a meeting that turned into a genuine friendship almost immediately.
Kağan is now our lead guide in Antalya, and he and Fethi still take off together on their own time to explore the region’s lesser-known corners: the mountaintop ruins of Termessos, the pine-shaded harbors of Phaselis, and the paleolithic caves of Karain. Fittingly, his surname translates to something like “the hardcore joker,” and anyone who’s spent a day with him will tell you it fits.
30- Dr. Selda Özhan Reaches Bodrum
It had been a long time coming, but The Other Tour finally has a guide in Bodrum — and Dr. Selda Özhan was well worth the wait. She holds a Ph.D. in Ancient History, has spent twenty years leading expeditions that include work for National Geographic, and is a certified freediver who has taken part in underwater surveys along the Aegean coast.
Selda leads guests along the Lelegian Way as comfortably as she leads them through the ruins of Ephesus, moving between English, Italian, Spanish, and her native Turkish without missing a beat. Guests who have walked with her come away saying the same thing: that she treats history less like a subject to be recited and more like a landscape to be read, one hillside and one column at a time.
31- Gülşah Şenol Covers The Marmara
We scouted Gülşah Şenol directly, and she brought exactly the kind of range we were looking for: fluent guiding in both English and Spanish across the entire Marmara region, from Istanbul and the Bosphorus down to Gallipoli, Bursa, and Edirne.
Beyond her guiding license, Gülşah is a writer and a photographer, and both instincts show up in her tours — she paces a day like a story and knows exactly where the light will be best for a photo. Guests describe her energy as infectious, and it’s easy to see why we wanted her on the roster the moment we met her.
32- Ümit Işın, A Team Obsession
Ümit Işın is someone the whole team has been quietly obsessed with for years—but his connection to The Other Tour began through our lead guide, Ömer Çelik.
The two first met by chance when Ömer joined an educational trip organized by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, allowing licensed guides to add the Aegean region to their official guiding credentials. Ümit was the archaeologist and expert responsible for the training—and ultimately the man helping Ömer earn that new regional qualification.
Their paths crossed unexpectedly once again in Istanbul, when Ömer encountered Ümit during a tour of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. By then, the initial professional connection was already becoming a genuine friendship. They have remained friends and colleagues ever since.
Ümit is the archaeologist behind Anadolu Arkeolojisi—Anatolian Archaeology—the TRT2 documentary series he created and hosted. We have spent countless evenings working through its more than 140 episodes together, absorbing his extraordinary knowledge of Anatolia’s ancient landscapes.
He trained as an archaeologist at Ankara University, spent years excavating sites across Lycia, Caria, Pamphylia and Pisidia, and founded Equinox Travel in 1994 to create research-driven journeys rooted in that field experience. Across the tourism industry, he is known as a guide’s guide: the person other guides turn to when they want to qualify in a new region, deepen their archaeological knowledge or simply discuss a difficult question with someone patient and exceptionally well informed.
Having Ümit on The Other Tour roster therefore feels less like a new arrival and more like the natural continuation of a relationship that began years ago with a chance meeting—and was strengthened by another. Ömer opened the door, friendship kept it open.
33- Anıl Yılmaz Wins Us Over on the Bosphorus
Fethi did a full Bosphorus cruise alongside Anıl Yılmaz while Anıl was guiding a family of clients, and Anıl passed with flying colors. Born and raised in Istanbul, with a Tourism Guidance degree from Anadolu Üniversitesi and English at a C2 level, he brings exactly the mix of local knowledge and infectious energy the team looks for.
A Google review that came in just today says it best:
“This was the best tour we’ve had in a long time! They totally customized the tour to our family and needs. We have two toddlers and the normal tours would’ve been too much for them so they took it easy, went at our pace and gave us a great guide (shout out Anil) who was knowledgeable, friendly and loved our kids..
he carried our little guy on his shoulders and was so sweet with our littler girl!
The fun continued on a solo boat trip on the Bosporus customized to us with Fethi and Ozge.. so nice, took so many pictures and shared them with us and showed us the highest level of hospitality and kindness, again being so sweet with our kids and letting us all relax and feel at ease… it was the perfect tour.. thank you guys!! Highly recommend!!”
34- Ali Rıza Serkan, Recommended By Mehmet
We found Ali Rıza Serkan through Mehmet, a mutual friend who owns a silver ring store on Soğukçeşme Street in Sultanahmet, the cobblestone lane that runs along the walls of Topkapı Palace. Mehmet doesn’t recommend people lightly, and one conversation with Ali confirmed why he made the introduction.
Ali is deep, in the best sense of the word — a philosopher-poet with 25 years of guiding experience who lived in Tokyo, London, New York, and North Carolina before choosing to come home to Istanbul for good. He holds a degree in American Culture and Literature, reads the city through Jung and Rumi in the same breath, and once guided the Director of Photography for Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s already invited us to his house this Saturday, and we suspect there’s a lot more to this story — check back Sunday for the rest.
35- Uğur Vural, Özge's First Call
Here begins a new chapter in this story: Özge Özenç joined The Other Tour in May 2026, and she took charge of scouting new tour guides across the country. Uğur Vural was the very first name that came to mind — a dear old friend of hers, and the obvious first call once she took on the job.
Uğur brings 25 years of guiding experience, a degree from Ankara University‘s Faculty of Languages, History and Geography, and fluency in English, Urdu, and Turkish, based out of Kuşadası with a nationwide license. He’s already guided important clients for us, including Sebastian Lapati, and we cannot wait to work with him more.
36- Aziz Acar, Scouted By Selda
For a short while, Selda Brown — the wife of Fethi’s great friend Trevor Brown — pitched in and scouted several tour guides for us. Aziz Acar was one of her finds.
Aziz brings ten years of guiding experience in Cappadocia and Central Anatolia, a degree in tourist guiding from Nevşehir University, and fluent English and Spanish, along with a track record of hosting diplomats and international VIPs. He’s also become known for mapping out gastronomic routes across the region, since he considers good food its own language. We’re excited to work with him.
Once again, Selda Brown scouted Hülya Civelek for us, and we published her profile on June 23, 2026. A native German speaker who is also fluent in English, Hülya brings 28 years of professional guiding experience to The Other Tour.
Her career began around İzmir and Bodrum before expanding across Türkiye’s major historical and archaeological destinations. Now based in Istanbul, Hülya has become our German-language specialist in the city — a veteran guide whose warmth, cultural fluency and decades of experience allow German-speaking guests to connect with Istanbul far beyond the usual monument checklist.
38- Elif Ünal, Özge Pumps It Up
Elif Ünal is a licensed guide who grew up in Cappadocia and is currently working through a second degree in archaeology, on top of her guiding license and a master’s in Tourism Management, all from Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University.
She specializes in the Neolithic period and the Byzantine churches of Cappadocia, and regularly guides trips further afield to Göbeklitepe and Karahan Tepe in the southeast. We can’t wait to work with her — she’s exactly the kind of guide who makes a good tour into an education.
39- Betül Başak Meets Fethi At Pandeli
Betül Başak was scouted by Özge Özenç, and she’s already guided high-profile clients for us — the feedback so far has been nothing but excellent.
Fethi met her in person for a lovely chat inside Pandeli, the historic restaurant above the Spice Market, to talk about future collaborations. Betül holds a BA in Classical Archaeology and an MA in Art History, and spent two years as a field archaeologist on the Marmaray excavation beneath the Bosphorus before ever leading a tour — which means she’s usually explaining a layer of Istanbul she’s personally excavated. We cannot wait to work with her more.
40- Eren Nacak Decodes The Mediterranean
Eren Nacak rounds out this batch, and we’re excited to have him. He’s an interdisciplinary researcher on a PhD track in Ancient Mediterranean Studies, with seven years of field experience blending archaeology with spatial data and 3D modeling.
Eren treats ancient sites less like postcards and more like puzzles to be decoded, using photogrammetry and digital visualization to show guests how ancient cities were actually built and organized. He’s guided documentary teams, corporate executives, and foreign ministers, and even worked as an interpreter for the Ministry of External Affairs during UNHCR summits in Turkey. We think he’ll be an excellent match for guests who want to go a layer deeper than the standard tour.
41- Ali Kütük Meets Fethi Near Termessos
Fethi was discovering Termessos for the first time, having brought in Kağan Özşakacı to introduce him properly to the Pisidian hill city, when the two stopped to rest by the Upper City Walls. A guide walked past leading a British couple — Ali Kütük, seventeen years deep into a career built on the Lycian Way. Fethi had to meet him, and the two have worked together ever since.
Ali grew up on the Mediterranean coast around Antalya and Fethiye and holds a degree in Tourist Guiding from Kapadokya University. He builds his days around trekking and archaeology rather than bus routes, favoring the climb to Tlos over the drive-by version, and now helps our clients walk sections of the Lycian lands as a group.
42- Yağız Öcal, A Spiritual Istanbul Native
The team was Yağız Öcal — a spiritual Istanbul native with over a decade of guiding experience and, as it happens, a soft spot for cats.
Yağız holds a degree from Marmara University‘s Tourism Guidance Department and has built a personal library of more than a thousand books on history, mythology, and architecture. A practicing spiritualist who reads tarot as comfortably as he reads ancient inscriptions, he guides travelers through both Istanbul and Cappadocia. We can’t wait to get him in front of guests.
43- Albert Eli Fits Jewish Heritage Tours
Yağız was the one who recommended Albert Eli, and Özge welcomed him to the family soon after. Born and raised in Istanbul and educated at Private Ulus Jewish High School before Gelişim University, Albert brings four years of guiding experience in English and Spanish, along with a deep personal connection to the city’s Jewish heritage.
The Other Tour runs a steady stream of Jewish heritage tours, and Albert slots into that work naturally — a Turkish Jew leading mostly American Jewish clients through the synagogues and streets of Balat and Kuzguncuk feels like exactly the right match. Off the clock, he’s a home cook and a guitarist with six instruments to his name.
44- Buse Burcu, Another Name From Yağız
Buse Burcu came recommended by Yağız as well, and Özge scouted her soon after — we’re eager to work together the moment the schedule allows. Born and raised in Anadolu Hisarı, Buse studied Translation and Interpretation in English at Istanbul University before training in Tourism Guiding at Marmara University, and has spent six years building a career centered on Istanbul’s neighborhoods and food.
She’s known for weaving culinary detours into her tours of Galata and Kuzguncuk, and guests often remark on how personally she treats the city — it isn’t just her workplace, it’s home.
45- Özlem Efeoğlu, Found On LinkedIn
Özge found Özlem Efeoğlu on LinkedIn, and we’re looking forward to working with her too — not least because she’s a fellow Black Sea lover. Özlem trained at S.U. Beyşehir Ali Akkanat Vocational School and has spent five years guiding travelers nationwide, from Istanbul’s back streets to the misty highlands of the Black Sea coast.
She counts the ruins of Ephesus among her favorite sites, and treats every tour as a cultural exchange rather than a straightforward sightseeing run, introducing guests to local artisans and village families along the way.
46- Dr. Ismail Gündüz, Selda's Ephesus Find
Selda Brown scouted Dr. Ismail Gündüz, and he’s a wonderful addition to our roster in Ephesus. Ismail holds a PhD in Tourism Management on top of a Master’s and a Bachelor’s in Travel Management, and has built his career around Kuşadası, where he studied and still lives.
He’s a certified specialist in the Seven Churches of Revelation and early Christian history, and just as comfortable guiding travelers through Göbeklitepe and Karahan Tepe as he is decoding the ruins of Ephesus itself.
47- Birsen Bulan Gives Us Ankara
Uğur Vural recommended Birsen Bulan, and with her, The Other Tour finally has a guide in Ankara — a gap we’ve been wanting to close for a long time. Birsen brings sixteen years of nationwide guiding experience and four university degrees spanning classical archaeology, art history, early childhood education, and Islamic theology, plus a psychology degree that shows up in how she reads a group.
Born in Adana and fluent in English and Spanish, she’s also a certified yoga teacher trainer and breathwork therapist, which makes her a natural fit for protocol-grade diplomatic travel. Her favorite site is Anıtkabir, and she treats Ankara not as a stopover but as the real story of the country’s modern identity. We’re very excited to have her.
48- Samet Köytepe, Into the Hittite Heartland
And Birsen Bulan has already started building out our Ankara team. She recommended Samet Köytepe, a young guide with a degree in French Language and Literature from Ankara University as well as a second degree in Tourism Guidance and Travel Management from Kâtip Çelebi University.
Samet works across Central Anatolia, and we’re particularly looking forward to working with him in Ankara and farther east across the Hittite heartlands — especially around Hattusa, Yazılıkaya, and Alacahöyük. With Birsen and Samet now in the network, a part of Turkey we’ve wanted to develop for a long time is finally beginning to take shape.
49- Batuhan Çataltepe Brings History Into the Streets
Batuhan Çataltepe is one of the younger guides joining our growing Istanbul roster, and he brings an approach we particularly like: old photographs and archival material carried directly into the streets, allowing guests to compare the Istanbul in front of them with the city that once stood in the same place.
A graduate of Hacettepe University, Batuhan is especially interested in church history, sacred architecture, Karaköy, Beşiktaş and Istanbul’s changing social landscape. His Tarih-i Seyyah approach fits naturally with the kind of curious, layered exploration we want The Other Tour to offer.
We haven’t had the opportunity to work with Batuhan extensively yet, but we’re very much looking forward to putting him in front of our guests and seeing where the collaboration goes.
50- Orçun Kamit, Worth the Wait
Number fifty had to be someone special.
Orçun Kamit is someone Fethi has known personally for some time, admired from close range, and — after a little persistence — finally managed to convince to join The Other Tour. He has been guiding professionally since 2007, and nearly two decades in the field have given him something that is difficult to teach: nuance, finesse, timing and the ability to read people without ever making the day feel rehearsed. His particular command of Sultanahmet and Istanbul’s Old City comes from years of working the same historic landscape in extraordinary depth rather than simply collecting destinations.
Orçun’s story also runs through Kuşadası and the world of Turkish carpets, an industry he knows from the inside. That makes having him around interesting to us for reasons that go well beyond assigning him tours. We’re genuinely curious. Ömer Çelik, Burak Plakay, Deniz Karagözoğlu and Fethi Karataş are all looking forward to sitting down with him, asking questions and learning more about carpets, craftsmanship, sales culture and a side of Turkish tourism that has shaped the industry for decades.
That is part of what we want this team to become: not simply fifty guides whose names sit on the same website, but fifty people who can teach one another.
It took us a while to get Orçun onboard. We’re very glad we did.
51- Şerif Yenen, A Meeting At Galataport
Fethi Karataş met Şerif Yenen by chance in the passenger exit area at Galataport, both of them waiting on clients to appear. You’ve already seen his name once in this story — he’s the guide Zeynep Karakaşoğlu names as one of her own role models. Fethi mentioned the birding tours The Other Tour runs in Istanbul, and Şerif was immediately taken with the idea, calling it exactly the kind of niche experience the industry needs more of.
Şerif is, by any measure, one of the most well-known guides in the country. Born near İzmir in 1963, he trained at Kuleli Military High School before earning an English Philology degree from the University of Istanbul and serving as an army officer, then became a licensed guide in 1989.
He wrote Turkish Odyssey, the first comprehensive Turkey guidebook written by a native Turk, has taught at Boğaziçi and Bilgi Universities, chaired the Istanbul Tourist Guides Guild, and has led figures like Oprah Winfrey and Pope Benedict XVI through the city. Meeting him at Galataport, and once again recently in Palatium Cafe in the old town, feels like exactly the kind of thing that only happens in Istanbul.
52- Gülşen Rüstemli, Ahmet’s First Find
Gülşen Rüstemli also marks the beginning of another little chapter in how our team is growing. She was scouted by Ahmet Sadıkoğlu, the newest addition to The Other Tour and Fethi’s personal assistant as of August 2026.
Gülşen brings seven years of professional guiding experience, a formal degree in Tourism Guiding, and fluency in both English and Russian. She specializes in private groups and has the warmth and flexibility we value in guides who need to do more than simply recite Istanbul’s history.
For Ahmet, she’s a pretty strong first contribution. For us, she adds another capable Russian-speaking guide to the Istanbul roster — and another promising personality to a team increasingly being built by its own people.
We’re looking forward to working with her.
53- Faruk Arslan Finds His Way to Us
Sometimes we scout guides, sometimes our guides recommend their friends — and sometimes a good one simply comes knocking on the door. Faruk Arslan contacted us himself, filled out our guide application form, and before long we started hearing his name from friends and fellow travel professionals too. Apparently, Faruk had already done some scouting for us on our behalf.
Fethi then met him personally in Sultanahmet, where they spent some time together, talked shop, wandered around and took the photographs that now appear on Faruk’s profile. The more they got to know each other, the clearer the fit became. Faruk has an unusually quiet, considered way about him, backed by decades of work as an English teacher and professional translator, and he guides fluently in both English and Spanish.
Most importantly, his philosophy lines up remarkably well with ours: friendly, interactive, story-driven and responsive to the people standing in front of him, rather than drowning guests in memorized information.
He found us, other people vouched for him, Fethi got to know him for himself — and here we are.
We absolutely love having Faruk onboard.
54- Buket Kıcır, Another Ömer Recommendation
Buket Kıcır came to us through Ömer Çelik, our lead guide in Istanbul for 2026 — and by this point in the story, Ömer’s recommendations carry quite a bit of weight.
Buket has been guiding professionally for six years, with academic training in tourism and classical archaeology at Balıkesir University. She has a particular talent for connecting Istanbul’s imperial past with the city that exists right now: Byzantine mosaics and Ottoman court history on one side, contemporary art, cinema, rooftops and modern urban culture on the other.
That balance is exactly what caught our attention. She isn’t interested in treating Istanbul as a museum frozen in time, and neither are we. Her tours are conversational, flexible and shaped around the people she is actually guiding rather than a memorized script.
Ömer brought us another interesting one.
We’re very happy to have Buket onboard and look forward to working with her.
55- Nehir Turan Frames Anatolia Differently
Nehir Turan joined the roster with a combination we had not encountered before: ten years of professional guiding, formal training in Tourism Guidance, and the eye of a street, drone and 360-degree photographer. Based in Kusadasi but working across Cappadocia, Ephesus and İzmir, he brings particular enthusiasm for archaeology, early Christianity, biblical sites and the Seven Churches of Revelation.
What caught our attention was the way Nehir turns history into something guests can both understand and take home with them. He uses local folklore, unexpected linguistic connections and visual storytelling to make ancient Anatolia feel present, while his photography creates a cinematic record of the journey itself. A passionate motorcycle traveler, he is especially well suited to active, curious guests who prefer genuine exploration to rigid itineraries.
Nehir’s profile went live on August 27, 2026, making him the fifty-fifth guide in this growing story—and giving the team an entirely new way of seeing Cappadocia and the Aegean.
56- Hazal Aydoğan, From a Ferry to the Team in Three Days
Fethi met Hazal Aydoğan aboard an Istanbul ferry on September 1, 2026. Hazal was guiding at the time, which gave him the rare opportunity to observe her at work before introducing himself. Something about the way she engaged with her guests caught his attention. He asked for her number, and the conversation that followed covered guiding, archaeology, Istanbul—and just about everything else.
Hazal has a background in archaeology and has participated in excavations, but her interests reach far beyond the ancient world. She holds a nationwide guiding licence and works primarily in Istanbul, moving comfortably between archaeology, art, gastronomy and the contemporary life of the city. That range, combined with what Fethi had already witnessed on the ferry, made the decision unusually quick.
By September 2—only one day after they met—The Other Tour had already entrusted Hazal with a private tour scheduled for September 29. Her profile went live the following day, on September 3, making her the fifty-sixth guide in this growing story.
Some additions arrive through long chains of introductions and recommendations. Hazal’s took one ferry ride, one wide-ranging conversation and three remarkably productive days.
Conclusion
There was never a master spreadsheet containing the future guide team of The Other Tour. One person led to another.
That matters because The Other Tour has never wanted a roster of interchangeable guides. We want people with their own obsessions, personalities, backgrounds and ways of understanding Turkey. An archaeologist should see an ancient city differently from a musician. A photographer should notice things an academic misses. Someone born in Istanbul should tell a different story from someone who grew up among the valleys of Cappadocia or the ruins of the Aegean.
And, increasingly, the point isn’t only what these guides can teach our guests.
It’s what they can teach each other.
That may ultimately be the most interesting thing this project has produced: a network that is beginning to grow under its own momentum. Guides recommend guides. Younger members learn from veterans. Specialists open doors into subjects and regions the rest of us barely knew. The team itself has become one of the ways The Other Tour keeps learning about Turkey.
So 56 is not a final number.
By the time you read this, there may already be another name waiting to be added below.
And when the right person comes along, we’ll add them here — #57, and the story continues.
