Turkey is breaking step with Europe and keeping summer time through the winter.
Instead of turning clocks back an hour as they do in the European Union in the autumn, Turkey will keep the clocks as they are and effectively change the country’s time zone.
Commenting on Twitter, Turkey’s Energy Minister Berat Albayrak said the move was to “benefit better from the daylight.”
He added: “In office hours and school hours the dark will be less and we will avoid the inconveniences of the transition periods.”
By maintaining its summer time settings, Turkey will be two hours in front of the rest of the Europe Union.
Turkey move welcomed
In the UK, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has long campaigned for lighter evenings throughout the year, blaming dark evenings for deaths and injuries on the roads.
Welcoming Turkey’s move, RoSPA chief executive Tom Mullarkey said: “They’ve definitely done the right thing. We would be happy with that arrangement in the UK. It would go some way to what we want.
“It would do a lot of good for their economy and not cost anything.”
On its website, RoSPA says the last time something similar was tried all year round in the UK in the 1960s “around 2,500 deaths and serious injuries were prevented for each year of the trial period.”
RoSPA also claims that keeping lighter evenings would save energy and boost tourism for the UK.