Bursa

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One in Three Turkish Vehicles, and 1,320 a Day

In the first half of 2026, factories in Bursa built 238,850 vehicles. That is 35.5% of Türkiye's entire automotive output — better than one in three.

The daily average was 1,319.6 vehicles coming off the line.

The three plants are OYAK Renault, which built 161,042 in the period, TOFAŞ with 77,449, and Karsan with 359. Türkiye's total across all member manufacturers, tractors included, was 673,611.

Bursa's export share is even more concentrated in cars specifically. In the first quarter of 2026 the city produced 86,629 cars — 47.7% of all cars made in Türkiye — and its exports accounted for 41.5% of the national car export total. Across the half year, 57% of everything built in Bursa was shipped abroad: 136,065 vehicles, which is 29% of Türkiye's total vehicle exports.

The clock: which makes Bursa a city that runs on a clock most people never see.

An assembly line does not measure time in hours. It measures in takt — the interval within which one unit must be finished so the next can start. At 1,320 vehicles a day, that interval is the number the entire city's largest industry is organised around, and a few seconds of drift is a measurable loss.

There is a long arc here. Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman state. The timekeeping of that state was alaturka: the day began at sunset, twelve o'clock was the moment the sun went down, and because that moment moves every day, every clock in the country had to be reset every few days, all year, forever. It required specialist staff in mosque timekeeping rooms to do nothing else.

Six centuries later, the same city runs production lines where drift is not tolerated at all.

Türkiye abolished the seasonal clock change in 2016 and now sits permanently at UTC+3. Bursa is at about 29° east, which puts it roughly 64 minutes ahead of its own sun — almost identical to Istanbul, which sits at nearly the same longitude across the water.

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