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Thousands gather at the summit of Sis Dagi in Salpazari, a district of Trabzon province on Türkiye's Black Sea coast, for the 205th Traditional Sis Dagi Culture Festival.
This annual highland gathering has outlasted two centuries of change in the region.
The festival traces its roots to the 1820s, making it one of the longest-running highland traditions on the Black Sea coast.
Its purpose has stayed constant across two centuries: bringing mountain communities together once a year to mark the start of the summer highland season.
The gathering is held every year on the fourth Saturday of July, drawing residents from across the region back to the same mountain each summer regardless of how far they have since moved for work or study.
The festival takes place at the summit of Sis Dagi, a peak rising 2,187 meters above sea level in Salpazari district, where cooler mountain air and open highland pasture have long made the site a natural meeting point for surrounding villages.
Participants dance the horon, a traditional line dance, as part of the festival's colorful atmosphere, alongside food, music and craft traditions passed down through generations of highland families in the area.
Organizers describe the festival as far more than entertainment, framing it as a living record of Black Sea highland life passed down through the generations rather than a single day's celebration.
Sis Dagi is one of many such yayla, or highland pasture, festivals held across Türkiye's Black Sea provinces each summer, a regional tradition tied to the seasonal migration of livestock and families to cooler mountain grazing grounds.
The gatherings carry social weight beyond custom, reuniting families and former neighbors who have since scattered to cities across Türkiye and abroad, turning the mountain into a meeting point for a diaspora as much as for a local audience.
Geographically, the Black Sea region is defined by steep, forested mountains running close to the coastline, a terrain that historically isolated highland communities and shaped distinct dialects, dress and music found nowhere else in the country.
As the festival winds down for another year, the gathering leaves Sis Dagi much as it found it: a remote summit that draws its communities home each July, preserving a highland identity that has endured since the tradition began.
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