A guide in a third language gives you museum labels. A guide in your language shares the jokes and grandmother’s kitchen asides. Meet our 7 licensed Spanish guides across Turkey. From a 25-year walled city local to an expert in 4th-century frescoes, they aren’t interchangeable. Here they are, so you can ask for the right one by name.
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Importance of Having A Spanish-Speaking Guide
Spanish-speaking travellers arriving in Istanbul are usually offered an English tour and told it will be fine. It generally is—until the guide reaches for a word they only half-know, flattens a joke, or answers the easy question instead of the interesting one because the interesting one takes more grammar than they have.
Working in Spanish removes that ceiling in both directions. Your guide can be funny, can disagree with a historian out loud, can explain why a mosque’s floor plan borrowed from a church without first translating the vocabulary. You can interrupt.
Argentine and Mexican and Spanish guests can hear the difference within the first ten minutes, and it is usually the moment the day stops being a transaction. All seven guides below hold professional guiding licences and work with The Other Tour regularly. You can request any of them by name.
List of Spanish-Speaking Guides
1. Faruk Arslan: Twenty-Five Years in Sultanahmet
Faruk Arslan has guided in Sultanahmet for twenty-five years, which in the old city means he has watched the same monuments change hands, change signage and change function. He works in English, Spanish and Turkish, all at advanced level.
His route into guiding is unusual. He studied English Teaching at Istanbul University on a full scholarship from 1996 to 2000, took the tourist guide programme at Nişantaşı University, and spent thirty years as a professional translator in Beşiktaş handling technical and legal work.
That background shows up in how precisely he explains things—a translator’s habit of refusing to let a term slide past unexplained.
He describes his own style as friendly, interactive and storytelling-focused, and says he gives priority to the expectations of the guests over the plan. Ask for him for a deep Sultanahmet day, or for an Istanbul layover tour where the clock is tight and you want somebody who knows every shortcut.
Istanbul has always been my dream city. I wanted to live and work here.
2. Birsen Bulan: Four Degrees, Nationwide Range
Birsen Bulan has sixteen years of nationwide guiding behind her and four university degrees: classical archaeology and art history, Islamic theology, early childhood pedagogy, and psychology. She is also a certified yoga teacher trainer and a breathwork therapist, which is a combination you do not meet often on a guiding roster.
She works across Ankara, Antalya, Bodrum, Istanbul, Cappadocia and Ephesus, in English and Spanish. Her specialisms run from sacred architecture and Islamic theology through Anatolian history to culinary heritage.
She handles protocol-grade private and diplomatic travel—the kind of itinerary where the guest list needs discretion as much as it needs a guide.
Request her for a multi-city Spanish-language route across Turkey, for anything touching theology or sacred architecture, or for corporate and diplomatic groups that need one person to hold an entire week together.
3. Albert Eli: Jewish Istanbul in Spanish
Albert Eli works in English and Spanish and specialises in Jewish Istanbul—the synagogues, the neighbourhoods and the community history that most itineraries skip entirely. He went to the private Ulus Jewish High School and studied at Gelişim University, and he has been guiding for four years.
His territory is Fener and Balat, the Ahrida and Yanbol synagogues, and the wider story of Istanbul’s synagogues. He also runs food-led days and brings Turkish music into his tours, and he works beyond the city across the Marmara region, the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts and Central Anatolia.
For Spanish-speaking guests specifically, there is a resonance worth knowing about: much of Istanbul‘s Sephardic community descends from Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and Ladino—Judeo-Spanish—survived in this city for five centuries. A Spanish-speaking guest walking Balat with Albert is closer to that history than they expect to be.
4. Aziz Acar: Cappadocia's Early Christian Specialist
Aziz Acar has guided in Central Anatolia for ten years and holds a tourist guiding degree from Nevşehir University. His English and Spanish both sit at C1, and Cappadocia is his base.
His subject is early Christianity, and he takes it seriously—fourth-century rock frescoes, theological iconography, and the Cappadocian Fathers whose arguments shaped Christian doctrine across the empire.
In the painted churches of the Göreme Open Air Museum, that depth is the difference between looking at a wall and reading one. He also covers the underground cities, local gastronomy, southeastern Turkey and Mesopotamia, and he works with diplomatic and high-protocol visitors.
Ask for him if your interest in Cappadocia goes past the balloons—if you want the theology behind the frescoes explained in Spanish by somebody who has spent a decade in those valleys.
5. Gülşah Şenol: Marmara, Byzantium & a Camera
Gülşah Şenol works in English and Spanish across the Marmara region—Istanbul and the Bosphorus, Gallipoli, Bursa and Edirne. Her range covers ancient history, Byzantine history and Ottoman heritage, which is most of what the region has to offer between them.
Her second skill is photography, and guests tend to notice it. She reads a building’s architecture and its best angle at the same time, which on a day around the Bosphorus or through Edirne turns into a set of photographs you would not have taken alone. Pair her with an Istanbul photography tour and the two skills stop competing for time.
She is a strong choice for a Spanish-speaking group doing Gallipoli or a Bursa day out of Istanbul, where the history needs a storyteller rather than a list of dates.
6. Hatice Kelek: Ephesus in Three Languages
Hatice Kelek is a licensed guide working in English, Spanish and Portuguese—the only trilingual guide on this list—and an Ege University graduate. Her ground is Ephesus, Selçuk, Şirince and Kuşadası, extending out to the Priene, Miletus and Didyma circuit.
She combines history and archaeology with culinary heritage and philosophy, and she guides in a mindful, yoga-informed way—she is a certified yoga instructor.
On a site as large and as hot as Ephesus, a guide who paces a day deliberately rather than racing the crowds to the Library of Celsus is worth more than one who knows an extra hundred dates.
Request her for a Spanish-language Ephesus tour from the Kuşadası cruise port, for the quieter Ionian sites, or for any day where food and philosophy matter as much as the ruins.
7. Doğan Denizdağ: Guiding Since 2014
Doğan Denizdağ took his B.A. at Ege University in 2014 and has guided ever since—native Turkish, fluent English, fluent Spanish. He works across Turkey, with Istanbul, Cappadocia and Ephesus as his most frequent ground.
His subjects are Ottoman and Byzantine art and architecture, plus the geography and natural history that most cultural guides leave out—useful on a route that crosses from a city into a volcanic valley. He stays active in cultural events, workshops and tourism seminars, and he builds days around the group rather than around a fixed sequence.
He suits a Spanish-speaking party doing the classic Turkey circuit of Istanbul, Cappadocia and Ephesus with one guide throughout, which is the version that works best when nobody wants to re-explain themselves in a new city every three days.
Which Guide Fits Your Trip
Exploring Istanbul, Gallipoli, Cappadocia, a Mediterranean cruise, and Pamukkale’s white terraces on a 12-day adventure!
- A Deep Old City Day: Faruk Arslan, twenty-five years inside Sultanahmet and a translator’s precision.
- A Multi-City Route: Birsen Bulan or Doğan Denizdağ, both of whom work nationwide across Turkey with one continuous thread.
- Jewish Heritage & Food: Albert Eli, for Balat, the synagogues and the Sephardic story.
- Cappadocia Beyond the Balloons: Aziz Acar, for early Christian frescoes and the underground cities.
- Gallipoli, Bursa or Edirne: Gülşah Şenol, who covers the whole Marmara region and photographs it well.
- Ephesus & the Ionian Coast: Hatice Kelek, who also works in Portuguese.
- Diplomatic or Protocol Travel: Birsen Bulan and Aziz Acar both have experience at that level.
FAQ
Our Guides
Are Spanish-Speaking Guides Licensed?
Yes. Every guide on this page holds a professional guiding licence and works with The Other Tour regularly. Guiding is a licensed profession in Turkey, and language accreditation forms part of it.
Can One Guide Cover a Whole Trip?
Yes. Birsen Bulan and Doğan Denizdağ both guide nationwide, so a Spanish-speaking group doing Istanbul, Cappadocia and Ephesus can keep one guide from start to finish.
Is Portuguese Available Too?
Hatice Kelek works in English, Spanish and Portuguese, based around Ephesus and the Ionian coast. Ask us for other regions and we will check the wider roster.
Book Your Favorite Guide Now
Hearing Istanbul explained in your own language is not a convenience upgrade. It is the difference between a guide who can only tell you what a building is and one who can tell you what people argued about inside it—and can hear the question underneath the question you actually asked.
Seven guides on this page can do that in Spanish, each in a different part of Turkey and on a different subject. Write to us with your dates, your cities and what your group is curious about, and we will tell you which of them we would send and why—then quote you once we have actually spoken.
The Other Tour has worked with licensed guides in Istanbul since 2011 as a TÜRSAB licensed operator, #7651, with no commissions and no shop kickbacks, ever, and €50 per booking going to Istanbul public schools: 13 schools visited, 32 school trips organised, 1,000+ students supported. Send us an inquiry and name the guide you want.
