Sharjah24 – AFP: Every morning, his skin bronzed by the sun, pensioner Metin Cakmakci rushes to grab a deckchair under a parasol on his local beach on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Istanbul, a bustling megalopolis of 16 million people between two continents and two seas, does not immediately bring to mind images of a beach resort.
But just like the locals of New York, Beirut and a handful of other global cities, Istanbulites can swim all summer long and return home on the metro with sand trapped under their sandals and salt layering their skin.
Istanbul officials have added a hundred extra sun loungers to Cakmakci's beach, creating room for 300 people under 170 parasols just 25 minutes' walk from the pensioner's home.
A large part of the spike stems from an economic crisis that has seen consumer prices soar by 80 percent in one year.
Istanbul has 85 accessible beaches or bathing spots between the Black Sea in the north, the Sea of Marmara in the south and the Bosphorus Strait in between.
At other times, an invisible demarcation line appears. One such line is in the Sile neighbourhood, where the Black Sea meets the northern edge of the Bosphorus Strait -- the stretch of water dividing Turkey between its European and its Asian halves.
The water reaches 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer, dropping to 11C on average in the winter.
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