A Funny Thing Happened When Türkiye Mandate Snow-Rated Tires For “Winter”

Unexpected consequences sometimes result from well-intentioned rules and regulations. Türkiye’s snow-rated tire mandate is a great example of how vehicle owners adapt and overcome.

As a tire nut fortunate enough to marry into a Turkish family, I’m a person who travels the country and has come to love it. We travel in both the European and also Asian parts of Türkiye, and while stuck in a cab, bus, or passport control line, my eyes wander to the tires Turkish drivers use. To my surprise, a very large percentage of drivers in Türkiye use “snow tires.” These are commonly referred to as “all-weather” tires in America.

I’m the tire expert at Car Talk. Well, one of them, and we’re not all guys. Suffice it to say, I have a keen eye for all things round and full of treads, having tested tires for a growing list of tire makers, and having reported on them here, there, and everywhere. I know tires like Salt Bae knows knives. I recently counted the tires in my family’s garage, and we had roughly 23 for just three cars. This may seem crazy, but as you will see, my tire journey is beginning to follow a path well known to folks in Türkiye.

It All Started With Good Intentions…

Istanbul is the most populous region of Türkiye by far and averages less than two inches of snow per year. Much of Türkiye is Aegean-coastal and too warm for snow to fall at all. Setting these facts aside, the Turkish Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications mandated that snow-rated rubber be employed - country-wide - from December 1st to April 1st. More specifically, the tires were for vehicles that “carried passengers or were employed in commercial uses.” The first year the law was in effect, fines in excess of 2 million Lira were issued.

Winter Tires Have Evolved

In the old days, winter rubber was referred to as snow tires, and there were a lot of trade-offs. Snow tires were noisy, they wore out super quick in hot weather, and they were sort of a specialty item. Then countries in Europe began to mandate them. Canada followed, and the winter tire industry evolved. The downsides common to older winter tire designs were mitigated, and it turned out that winter-rated rubber worked just fine in summer and cost less than a premium all-season tire.

Many drivers in Türkiye switched to “snow-rated” tires to comply with the mandate and gave up on the mild-weather tires instead of swapping twice yearly. No rule says you can't use them all year. Had I not been testing two new tires from Michelin and Falken this year, I would not have known why that makes perfect sense.

Earning A Snow Rating

It turns out that passing the test to make a tire “Snow-rated” is not that difficult for tire manufacturers. The test only gauges acceleration, and the all-season tires and compounds already in use were close to meeting the specification without changes. Add a few more sipes, deeper tread blocks, a little secret sauce, and voilà; you have yourself a new type of all-year tire officially stamped with the three-peak mountain snowflake denoting severe snow duty.

It turns out these new tire models are great. We’ve tested all-weather-snow-rated tires from Michelin, Falken, and Yokohama in all weather conditions and found that they are the holy grail of tire styles. They work well in snow and have no downsides that most drivers can detect in normal driving. In our testing, they didn’t even consume more fuel. These new all-weather tires branded with the severe snow-duty stamp don’t cost more than regular all-season tires. In fact, our pricing comparisons show they are often less expensive.

This explains why on a 90-degree day in late July in Istanbul, I found myself looking out a cab window at a Citroën Berlingo wearing tires called “Snoways.”

Canadians, Europeans from snowy areas, and car nuts like me who once swapped their summer rubber for snow-rated tires when winter arrived are now discovering the many all-weather options available.

Do you have an off-road SUV? The Falken Wildpeak A/T Trail may be your cup of tea. Maybe you drive a sporty Euro-hatch? The Michelin CrossClimate2 might be up your alley. All-weather tires with the three-peak mountain snowflake are now available for nearly every type of passenger vehicle. And you need not swap back to your warm-weather tires, as drivers all over Türkiye are now proving.

Read more on the Best Tires in the industry here.