The clocks go forward one hour not on Sunday morning but Monday morning. But why do they change, what is Daylight Saving Time and why is it Monday this year?

Turkey is currently within the Eastern European Time (EET) zone as observed in countries including Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Kaliningrad(Russia), Ukraine.

EET is UTC or Grenwich Mean Time +2 hours.

Twice a year Turkey adjusts the national clock to allow for the differences in the length of summer and winter days – Spring Forward, Fall Back.

DST

This adjustment is called Daylight Saving Time (DST).

DST was first used in some countries, such as Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom, during World War I as a measure aimed at conserving coal.

Many countries abandoned DST after the war, but over the years it has re-emerged within Europe.  By the early 1980s, many countries of the European Union including Turkey were already using daylight saving time, but they had different practices, thus impeding transport schedules and communications within the continent.

In 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide daylight saving time for consistency to apply across Europe.

The EU daylight saving schedule runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October.

In 2000, an EU directive was issued on daylight saving arrangements. In the directive, it was mentioned that summer-time arrangements maintained for the past 20 years would be renewed for an unspecified period.

It also noted that the last Sundays in March and October would be the dates definitively adopted for the DST schedule among EU countries. Turkey adopted this DST schedule too.

As Turkey is such a wide country the time difference between the East and West of Turkey is 1 hour and 16 minutes which is quite a difference. That's good for people living in the west of Turkey where the light fades later than in the east.

Change on Monday not Sunday

Normally the clocks would go forward 1 hour on Sunday morning at 3am but not this year.

The Turkish cabinet agreed that for this year only because the national university entrance exams would be held on the Sunday of the change it would be unfair to students to lose an hour.

So for this year only, in Turkey, the clocks will 'spring' forward on Monday morning at 3am.

Isn't that nice.......