From Sinop-Inceburun in the north to Anamur in the south, there are 415 lighthouses of varying size along Turkey's 8334 km coastline, which extends from Igneada to Hopa on the Black Sea, and from Çanakkale-Seddülbahir on the Dardanelles to Hatay-Akinciburnu on the Mediterranean. According to the sources, construction of the first modern lighthouse in Turkey followed a serious maritime accident at the entrance to the Bosphorus at Istanbul, when a galleon, under the command of Haci Kaptan and carrying commercial goods to Egypt, ran aground in the night at Kumkapi in 1755. No sooner did the reigning sultan, Osman II, hear of the disaster than he instructed the Admiral of the Ottoman Fleet, Süleyman Pasha, to have the first lighthouse built in Istanbul's Ahirkapi quarter.

It is interesting that, despite Turkey's being a country surrounded by water, the great majority of her lighthouses were built by the French under a concession granted in 1855.