Torrential rainfall has killed two people and caused chaos across Istanbul, as the Turkish city recorded its highest rainfall in more than 80 years.
Istanbul Governor Davut Gul instructed the city’s 16 million residents to stay at home unless outings were absolutely necessary, closed schools and banned motorbikes as 8,000 emergency service workers were sent out to deal with the effects of days of downpours.
“Rainfall in Istanbul will continue for another two to three days. Do not go outside unless absolutely necessary,” Mr Gul told a press conference on Thursday morning.
He said it was “the highest level of precipitation recorded in Istanbul since 1942”, when records began.
Many areas of the city had received more than 100kg of rain per square metre, equivalent to 100mm, since early on Wednesday, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality said. Rainfall in the Beykoz area of north-eastern Istanbul had reached 242kg per square metre, the authority said.
An investigation has been launched following the death of a 14-year-old boy who died from electrocution after he stepped into a puddle in the Fatih district, the Istanbul governorship said. He was taken to hospital unconscious but could not be saved, the statement added.
A 34-year-old died after slipping and hitting their head on a pavement.
Footage published by state media showed cars drifting down streets, flooded homes and mosques, and passengers trapped in a bus with dirty flood water up to their knees.
“Roads turned into lakes in many parts of the city,” state broadcaster TRT reported.
At Istanbul Airport, 51 flights were diverted to alternative airports and another 19 flights were cancelled, Mr Gul said.
The unusually heavy rain began on Tuesday and continued into Wednesday. Streets began to flood as drainage systems were overwhelmed.
Istanbul residents received text messages from disaster management services on Wednesday evening warning them to stay away from riverbanks and flooded roads.
Residents of basement apartments were told they “should take precautions”, while power cuts halted water supplies to homes and businesses in parts of the city, despite the torrential rain falling outside.
Emergency services received more than 1,200 reports of flooding, 15 of landslides, 47 of people trapped and two of roofs blown off, the governorship said.
Heavy flooding also made streets impassable in the city of Antalya on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. The state meteorological service issued warnings for more heavy rain and wind across the country on Thursday.
Turkey has been experiencing an unusually wet 2026, the service said in a climate report released in September.
Rainfall between January and August was 54 per cent higher than the 30-year average between 1991 and 2020. A third of the extreme weather events in the first eight months of the year were heavy rainfall and flooding.