Turkey Will Set Its Clocks to Mecca, Not Greenwich Time
Turkey Will Set Its Clocks to Mecca, Not Greenwich Time - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East
This is truly becoming a puzzle. Every time our Ministry of Energy announces that Turkey will be permanently on summer time I am delighted. We were officially told that this October was going to be end of clock changes. Now they say not yet, and we are going back to the hated winter time once again.
Turkey is considering abandoning Greenwich standard time and adopting Islamic Mean Time, a switch to the same time zone as Saudi Arabia. Rahsan Gulsan questions the motives behind and impacts of the change, and wonders if adopting Mecca time will turn Turkey away from Europe.
We have another issue with our hours. The ministry wants to change the meridian Turkey uses to set its clocks.
According to a law passed in 1925, Turkey uses the 30th meridian east of Greenwich to set its time. This meridian, which passes through Izmit, puts Turkey in the same time zone as many European countries and is identified as GMT 2. The meridian our ministry wants to use now is 40th, which passes through eastern Turkey. If we adopt that, then Turkey will be GMT 3, which will distance us from Europe one more hour.
As the 40th meridian also passes through Saudi Arabia, it will mean Turkey will be twinned with Riyadh instead of Athens, as it is now.