Güngören

History

Güngören was once primarily farmland set on rolling hills and was known by the village name of Vidos. Güngören, like neighboring Zeytinburnu and Bağcılar have grown rapidly since the 1950s and in a largely unplanned way which has caused significant quality of life issues. Informally built gecekondu have been replaced with more formal apartment blocks while vacant land has been transformed into trade zones and industrial parks. The majority of the population is made up of migrants who arrived from rural Anatolia. As metropolitan Istanbul grew, the national government developed State road D.100 which runs through the center of the district. The construction of the highway led to the demolition of hundreds of informally built housing units but also made travel through the region significantly easier. In 1992, the T1 line of the Istanbul Tram was extended through the neighborhood towards its terminus in Bağcılar. The area is now served extensively by the Metrobus, M1A line of the Istanbul Metro and the Istanbul Tram. Despite the evolution of the district into a formally built urban area serviced by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality it remains at high risk of damage due to earthquakes. The area is increasingly the focus of both the national and municipal governments for reconstruction and retrofitting of existing structures in order to mitigate risk of collapse. Güngören is a district with a variety of socio-economic issues including poverty, joblessness, poor education, pollution, poor quality construction and lack of green space. While originally catering to migrants from Anatolia, the area is now home to a growing population of people from Afghanistan, Xinjiang and Syria. The district was the site of the 2008 Istanbul bombings. The area is hard to distinguish from…

Most-observed species

• Hooded Crow

  Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  9,930
• Yellow-legged Gull

  Larus michahellis J.F.Naumann, 1840 · Aves
  9,748
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  6,689
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,956
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  5,931
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,435
• Western Jackdaw

  Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,374
• Rose-ringed Parakeet

  Psittacula krameri (Scopoli, 1769) · Aves
  4,983

Most recent

• M 5 — 2025-10-02
  22 km S of Marmara Ereğlisi, Turkey
• M 3.8 — 2025-07-05
  30 km SSW of Kumburgaz, Turkey
• M 4.2 — 2025-07-02
  4 km NE of Gemlik, Turkey
• M 4 — 2025-07-01
  3 km S of Umurbey, Turkey
• M 3.7 — 2025-05-03
  27 km SE of Marmara Ereğlisi, Turkey
• M 4.3 — 2025-04-25
  19 km SSW of Kumburgaz, Turkey