Istanbul

Column of Constantine[17]

The first known name of the city is Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον, Byzántion), the name given to it at its foundation by Megarian colonists around 657 BCE.[10][18] Megarian colonists claimed a direct line back to the founders of the city, Byzas, the son of the god Poseidon and the nymph Ceroëssa.[18] Modern excavations have raised the possibility that the name Byzantium might reflect the sites of native Thracian settlements that preceded the fully fledged town.[19] Constantinople comes from the Latin name Constantinus, after Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who refounded the city in 324 CE.[18] Constantinople remained the most common name for the city in the West until the 1930s, when Turkish authorities began to press for the use of "Istanbul" in foreign languages. Ḳosṭanṭīnīye (Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطينيه) and İstanbul were the names used alternatively by the Ottomans during their rule.[20]

The name İstanbul (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈtanbuɫ] (listen), colloquially Turkish pronunciation: [ɯsˈtambuɫ]) is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase "εἰς τὴν Πόλιν" (pronounced Greek pronunciation: [is tim ˈbolin]), which means "to the city"[21] and is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks. This reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was also reflected by its Ottoman nickname Der Saadet meaning the "Gate to Prosperity" in Ottoman Turkish.[22] An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first and third syllables dropped.[18] Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, such as Evliya Çelebi, describe it as the common Turkish name of the time; between the late 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word Islambol (Ottoman Turkish: اسلامبول) on coinage was in 1730 during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I.[23] In modern Turkish, the name is written as İstanbul, with a dotted İ, as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I. In English the stress is on the first or last syllable, but in Turkish it is on the second syllable (tan).[24] A person from the city is an İstanbullu (plural: İstanbullular); Istanbulite is used in English.[25]

This large keystone might have belonged to a triumphal arch at the Forum of Constantine (present-day Çemberlitaş).[17]

Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE.[26] That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels.[27][26][28][29] The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE,[30] On the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos,[31] mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.[32]

The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE,[10][33][lower-alpha 3] when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosporus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy.[39] The city experienced a brief period of Persian rule at the turn of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars.[40] Byzantium then continued as part of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League, before gaining independence in 355 BCE.[41] Long allied with the Romans, Byzantium officially became a part of the Roman Empire in 73 CE.[42] Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus cost it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated.[43] Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained—and, by some accounts, surpassed—its previous prosperity.[44]

Rise and fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire

Main article: Constantinople

Originally built by Constantine the Great in the 4th century and later rebuilt by Justinian the Great after the Nika riots in 532, the Hagia Irene is an Eastern Orthodox Church located in the outer courtyard of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. It is one of the few Byzantine era churches that were never converted into mosques; during the Ottoman period it served as Topkapı's principal armoury.

Originally a church, later a mosque, the 6th-century Hagia Sophia (532–537) by Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Seville Cathedral (1507) in Spain.

The construction of the Aqueduct of Valens began during the reign of the Roman emperor Constantius II and was completed in 373 during the reign of emperor Valens.

Constantine the Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324.[45] Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century.[46] On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which was later permanently divided between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.[47]

the Basilica Cistern after restoration

The establishment of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman power eastward as the city became a center of Greek culture and Christianity.[47][48] Numerous churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian the Great and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years.[49] Constantine also undertook a major renovation and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots.[50][51] Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the advance of Islam.[48] During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world.[52][53] Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization".[54][55]

Map of Istanbul in the 16th century by the Ottoman polymath Matrakçı Nasuh

Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders.[56] They established the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire.[57] Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261.[58] Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair,[59] and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century.[lower-alpha 4] After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of the city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deesis mosaics in Hagia Sophia and Kariye, were created.[60]

Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II, such as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack.[61] In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's supply routes and strangling it slowly.[62] On 29 May 1453, after an eight-week siege (during which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed), Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople and declared it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hours later, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the Islamic creed, converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully.[63] Mehmed declared himself as the new Kayser-i Rûm (the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of the Caesar of Rome) and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire.[64][65]

Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic eras

Following the conquest of Constantinople,[lower-alpha 5] Mehmed II immediately set out to revitalize the city. Cognizant that revitalization would fail without the repopulation of the city, Mehmed II welcomed everyone–foreigners, criminals, and runaways– showing extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate outsiders that came to define Ottoman political culture.[67] He also invited people from all over Europe to his capital, creating a cosmopolitan society that persisted through much of the Ottoman period.[68] Revitalizing Istanbul also required a massive program of restorations, of everything from roads to aqueducts.[69] Like many monarchs before and since, Mehmed II transformed Istanbul's urban landscape with wholesale redevelopment of the city center.[70] There was a huge new palace to rival, if not overshadow, the old one, a new covered market (still standing as the Grand Bazaar), porticoes, pavilions, walkways, as well as more than a dozen new mosques.[69] Mehmed II turned the ramshackle old town into something that looked like an imperial capital.[70]

Social hierarchy was ignored by the rampant plague, which killed the rich and the poor alike in the 16th century.[71] Money could not protect the rich from all the discomforts and harsher sides of Istanbul.[71] Although the Sultan lived at a safe remove from the masses, and the wealthy and poor tended to live side by side, for the most part Istanbul was not zoned as modern cities are.[71] Opulent houses shared the same streets and districts with tiny hovels.[71] Those rich enough to have secluded country properties had a chance of escaping the periodic epidemics of sickness that blighted Istanbul.[71]

View of the Golden Horn and the Seraglio Point from Galata Tower

The Ottoman Dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries.[13] Suleiman the Magnificent's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of especially great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics, stained glass, calligraphy, and miniature flourished.[72] The population of Constantinople was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century.[73]

A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which produced political reforms and allowed new technology to be introduced to the city.[74] Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period,[75] and Constantinople was connected to the rest of the European railway network in the 1880s.[76] Modern facilities, such as a water supply network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the following decades, although later than to other European cities.[77] The modernization efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire.[78]

Two aerial photos showing the Golden Horn and the Bosporus, taken from a German zeppelin on 19 March 1918

Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and the Ottoman Parliament, closed since 14 February 1878, was reopened 30 years later on 23 July 1908, which marked the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era.[79] A series of wars in the early 20th century, such as the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), plagued the ailing empire's capital and resulted in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the regime of the Three Pashas.[80]

A view of Bankalar Caddesi (Banks Street) in the late 1920s. Completed in 1892, the Ottoman Central Bank headquarters is seen at left. In 1995 the Istanbul Stock Exchange moved to İstinye, while numerous Turkish banks have moved to Levent and Maslak.[81]

The Ottoman Empire joined World War I (1914–1918) on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 was among the major events which marked the start of the Armenian genocide during WWI.[82] Due to Ottoman and Turkish policies of Turkification and ethnic cleansing, the city's Christian population declined from 450,000 to 240,000 between 1914 and 1927.[83] The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918 and the Allies occupied Constantinople on 13 November 1918. The Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the Allies on 11 April 1920 and the Ottoman delegation led by Damat Ferid Pasha was forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920.

Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was declared persona non grata. Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo, Italy, on 16 May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923.[84] Turkish forces of the Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha (3rd Corps), entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the Liberation Day of Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu) and is commemorated every year on its anniversary.[84] On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the Republic's first President.[85][86]

A 1942 wealth tax assessed mainly on non-Muslims led to the transfer or liquidation of many businesses owned by religious minorities.[87] From the late 1940s and early 1950s, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, and avenues were constructed throughout the city, sometimes at the expense of historical buildings.[88] The population of Istanbul began to rapidly increase in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul.[89]

Satellite view of Istanbul and the strait of Bosporus

Istanbul is located in north-western Turkey and straddles the strait Bosporus, which provides the only passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Sea of Marmara.[15] Historically, the city has been ideally situated for trade and defense: The confluence of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn provide both ideal defense against enemy attack and a natural toll-gate.[15] Several picturesque islands—Büyükada, Heybeliada, Burgazada, Kınalıada, and five smaller islands—are part of the city.[15] Istanbul's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Large sections of Caddebostan sit on areas of landfill, increasing the total area of the city to 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi).[15]

Despite the myth that seven hills make up the city, there are, in fact, more than 50 hills within the city limits. Istanbul's tallest hill, Aydos, is 537 meters (1,762 ft) high.[15]

The nearby North Anatolian Fault is responsible for much earthquake activity, although it doesn't physically pass through the city itself.[90] The fault caused the earthquakes in 1766 and 1894.[90] The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development, with over 500,000[90] vulnerable buildings demolished and replaced since 2012.[91] The city has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, most recently in 2018,[91] requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction.

Climate

Microclimates of Istanbul according to Köppen–Geiger classification system

Istanbul has a borderline Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csa, Trewartha Cs), humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa, Trewartha Cf) and oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb, Trewartha Do) under both classifications. It experiences cool winters with frequent precipitation, and warm to hot (mean temperature peaking at 20 °C (68 °F) to 25 °C (77 °F) in August, depending on location), moderately dry summers.[92] Spring and fall are usually mild, with varying conditions dependent on wind direction.[93][94]

Istanbul's weather is strongly influenced by the Sea of Marmara to the south, and the Black Sea to the north. This moderates temperature swings and produces a mild temperate climate with low diurnal temperature variation. Consequently, Istanbul's temperatures almost always oscillate between −5 °C (23 °F) and 32 °C (90 °F),[95] and most of the city does not experience temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) for more than 14 days a year.[96] Another effect of Istanbul's maritime position is its persistently high dew points, near-saturation morning humidity,[97] and frequent fog,[98][95] which also limits Istanbul's sunshine hours to levels closer to Western Europe.[99]

Because of its hilly topography and maritime influences, Istanbul exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates.[100] Within the city, rainfall varies widely owing to the rain shadow of the hills in Istanbul, from around 600 millimeters (24 in) on the southern fringe at Florya to 1,200 millimeters (47 in) on the northern fringe at Bahçeköy.[101] Furthermore, while the city itself lies in USDA hardiness zones 9a to 9b, its inland suburbs lie in zone 8b with isolated pockets of zone 8a, restricting the cultivation of cold-hardy subtropical plants to the coasts.[96][102]

As Istanbul is only slightly rain shadowed from Mediterranean storms and is otherwise surrounded by water, it usually receives some amount of precipitation from both Western European and Mediterranean systems. This results in frequent precipitation during the winter months; January averages 20 days of precipitation when counting trace accumulations,[103] 17 when using a 0.1 mm threshold, and 12 when using a 1.0 mm threshold.[104] Precipitation is observed throughout the year; as 38% of the precipitation falls in winter, 18% in spring, 13% in summer, 31% in autumn. Summer is the driest season; However, unlike a true Mediterranean climate, there is no dry season. The number of rainy days in the city is approximately 131 days, and in some parts it may reach up to 152 days.[105]

According to a study, an average of more than 60 centimeters (24 in) of snow falls every year on the area of the airport, making Istanbul the snowiest major city in the Mediterranean basin, despite not having the cold winters typical of snowy cities.[95][106] Snowfall varies widely between years and different areas of the city, with districts facing north more prone to receive snow than southerly ones. This is largely caused by lake-effect snow, which forms when cold Arctic maritime or Polar continental air, originating respectively from the North Pole or Siberia, develops into moist and unstable air that ascends to form snow squalls along the lee shores of the Black Sea, upon contact with the relatively warm water.[107] These snow squalls are heavy snow bands and occasionally thundersnows, with accumulation rates approaching 5–8 centimeters (2.0–3.1 in) per hour.[108]

The highest recorded temperature at the official downtown observation station in Sarıyer was 41.5 °C (107 °F) and on 13 July 2000.[107] The lowest recorded temperature was −16.1 °C (3 °F) on 9 February 1929.[107] The highest recorded snow cover in the city center was 80 centimeters (31 in) on 4 January 1942, and 104 centimeters (41 in) in the northern suburbs on 11 January 2017.[109][107][110]

Climate data for Kireçburnu, Istanbul (normals 1981–2010, extremes 1929–2018, snowy days 1996-2011)
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	22.4 (72.3)	24.6 (76.3)	29.3 (84.7)	33.6 (92.5)	36.4 (97.5)	40.2 (104.4)	41.5 (106.7)	40.5 (104.9)	39.6 (103.3)	34.2 (93.6)	27.8 (82.0)	25.5 (77.9)	41.5 (106.7)
Average high °C (°F)	8.5 (47.3)	8.7 (47.7)	10.9 (51.6)	15.5 (59.9)	20.1 (68.2)	25.0 (77.0)	26.9 (80.4)	27.2 (81.0)	23.8 (74.8)	19.2 (66.6)	14.2 (57.6)	10.4 (50.7)	17.5 (63.5)
Daily mean °C (°F)	5.8 (42.4)	5.5 (41.9)	7.3 (45.1)	11.2 (52.2)	15.7 (60.3)	20.5 (68.9)	22.9 (73.2)	23.4 (74.1)	19.9 (67.8)	15.8 (60.4)	11.0 (51.8)	7.8 (46.0)	13.9 (57.0)
Average low °C (°F)	3.5 (38.3)	2.9 (37.2)	4.4 (39.9)	7.8 (46.0)	12.2 (54.0)	16.7 (62.1)	19.7 (67.5)	20.4 (68.7)	16.8 (62.2)	13.2 (55.8)	8.5 (47.3)	5.5 (41.9)	11.0 (51.8)
Record low °C (°F)	−13.9 (7.0)	−16.1 (3.0)	−11.1 (12.0)	−2.0 (28.4)	1.4 (34.5)	7.1 (44.8)	10.5 (50.9)	10.2 (50.4)	6.0 (42.8)	0.6 (33.1)	−7.2 (19.0)	−11.5 (11.3)	−16.1 (3.0)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	99.5 (3.92)	82.1 (3.23)	69.2 (2.72)	43.1 (1.70)	31.5 (1.24)	40.6 (1.60)	39.6 (1.56)	41.9 (1.65)	64.4 (2.54)	102.3 (4.03)	110.3 (4.34)	125.1 (4.93)	849.6 (33.45)
Average precipitation days (≥ 0.1 mm)	16.9	15.2	13.2	10.0	7.4	7.0	4.7	5.1	8.1	12.3	13.9	17.5	131.3
Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 cm)	4.5	4.7	2.9	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.3	2.7	15.2
Mean monthly sunshine hours	68.2	89.6	142.6	180.0	248.0	297.6	319.3	288.3	234.0	158.1	93.0	62.0	2,180.7
Mean daily sunshine hours	2.2	3.2	4.6	6.0	8.0	9.6	10.3	9.3	7.8	5.1	3.1	2.0	5.9
Mean daily daylight hours	10	11	12	13	14	15	15	14	12	11	10	9	12
Percent possible sunshine	22	29	38	46	57	64	69	66	65	46	31	22	46
Average ultraviolet index	2	2	4	5	7	8	9	8	6	4	2	1	5
Source: [107][111][112]

Climate data for Florya, Istanbul (normals 1991–2020, extremes 1937–present, sunshine 1981-2010)
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	20.5 (68.9)	21.0 (69.8)	26.0 (78.8)	30.5 (86.9)	33.5 (92.3)	36.2 (97.2)	37.4 (99.3)	38.6 (101.5)	39.5 (103.1)	32.3 (90.1)	26.4 (79.5)	23.1 (73.6)	39.5 (103.1)
Average high °C (°F)	9.2 (48.6)	9.8 (49.6)	12.4 (54.3)	17.1 (62.8)	22.2 (72.0)	26.8 (80.2)	29.5 (85.1)	29.7 (85.5)	25.8 (78.4)	20.8 (69.4)	15.8 (60.4)	11.1 (52.0)	19.2 (66.5)
Daily mean °C (°F)	6.2 (43.2)	6.3 (43.3)	8.3 (46.9)	12.2 (54.0)	17.2 (63.0)	22.0 (71.6)	24.7 (76.5)	25.0 (77.0)	21.1 (70.0)	16.7 (62.1)	12.1 (53.8)	8.1 (46.6)	15.0 (59.0)
Average low °C (°F)	3.7 (38.7)	3.6 (38.5)	5.3 (41.5)	8.6 (47.5)	13.4 (56.1)	17.8 (64.0)	20.5 (68.9)	21.1 (70.0)	17.4 (63.3)	13.6 (56.5)	9.3 (48.7)	5.7 (42.3)	11.7 (53.0)
Record low °C (°F)	−12.6 (9.3)	−10.0 (14.0)	−9.6 (14.7)	−1.4 (29.5)	1.4 (34.5)	8.4 (47.1)	11.0 (51.8)	11.4 (52.5)	6.7 (44.1)	1.8 (35.2)	−4.6 (23.7)	−11.5 (11.3)	−12.6 (9.3)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	72.0 (2.83)	78.8 (3.10)	61.0 (2.40)	51.5 (2.03)	30.2 (1.19)	31.5 (1.24)	19.8 (0.78)	26.1 (1.03)	44.7 (1.76)	80.4 (3.17)	69.3 (2.73)	87.3 (3.44)	648.0 (25.51)
Average precipitation days (≥ 0.1 mm)	18.3	16.8	15.5	10.6	9.0	6.3	3.3	3.2	7.3	11.8	13.5	17.2	132.8
Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 cm)	2.7	3.5	0.6	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.2	1.0	8.0
Mean monthly sunshine hours	89.3	103.4	154.8	198.2	279.0	286.2	310.7	284.2	201.7	152.1	112.0	83.3	2,254.9
Mean daily sunshine hours	2.8	3.6	4.9	6.6	9.0	9.5	10.0	9.1	6.7	4.9	3.7	2.6	6.1
Percent possible sunshine	28	32	40	50	64	63	66	65	55	44	37	28	48
Source: [113][114][115][116]

Climate data for Bahçeköy, Istanbul (normals and extremes 1981–2010, snowy days 1990-1999)
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	25.3 (77.5)	27.3 (81.1)	27.2 (81.0)	33.6 (92.5)	34.4 (93.9)	36.6 (97.9)	38.7 (101.7)	38.0 (100.4)	38.2 (100.8)	35.7 (96.3)	28.0 (82.4)	23.8 (74.8)	38.7 (101.7)
Average high °C (°F)	7.6 (45.7)	8.3 (46.9)	10.2 (50.4)	16.4 (61.5)	20.6 (69.1)	25.0 (77.0)	26.4 (79.5)	26.6 (79.9)	23.7 (74.7)	19.0 (66.2)	14.2 (57.6)	9.8 (49.6)	17.3 (63.2)
Daily mean °C (°F)	4.6 (40.3)	4.0 (39.2)	5.9 (42.6)	10.3 (50.5)	15.4 (59.7)	19.8 (67.6)	21.5 (70.7)	21.6 (70.9)	18.1 (64.6)	14.1 (57.4)	9.5 (49.1)	6.3 (43.3)	12.6 (54.7)
Average low °C (°F)	1.3 (34.3)	1.1 (34.0)	2.5 (36.5)	6.4 (43.5)	10.6 (51.1)	14.7 (58.5)	17.0 (62.6)	17.9 (64.2)	13.9 (57.0)	10.7 (51.3)	6.8 (44.2)	3.4 (38.1)	8.9 (47.9)
Record low °C (°F)	−16.0 (3.2)	−15.4 (4.3)	−10.6 (12.9)	−3.1 (26.4)	0.9 (33.6)	5.7 (42.3)	7.8 (46.0)	8.0 (46.4)	3.1 (37.6)	−1.2 (29.8)	−4.3 (24.3)	−9.8 (14.4)	−16.0 (3.2)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	163.7 (6.44)	112.5 (4.43)	101.3 (3.99)	68.3 (2.69)	55.8 (2.20)	47.4 (1.87)	45.3 (1.78)	71.9 (2.83)	79.6 (3.13)	119.0 (4.69)	164.3 (6.47)	188.3 (7.41)	1,217.4 (47.93)
Average precipitation days (≥ 0.1 mm)	15.8	14.2	12.9	10.1	8.3	6.9	5.8	5.9	7.4	12.6	15.4	19.8	135.1
Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 cm)	4.6	5.2	1.7	0.4	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.3	4.0	16.2
Source: [117][118]

Climate data for Istanbul
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average sea temperature °C (°F)	8.4 (47.1)	7.7 (45.9)	8.3 (46.9)	10.2 (50.4)	15.5 (59.9)	21.3 (70.3)	24.6 (76.3)	24.9 (76.8)	22.8 (73.0)	18.4 (65.1)	13.8 (56.8)	10.5 (50.9)	15.5 (60.0)
Source: Weather Atlas [112]

Climate change

Müze Gazhane in Kadıköy is the first climate change museum in Turkey.

As with virtually every part of the world, climate change is causing more heatwaves,[119] droughts,[120] storms,[121] and flooding[122][123] in Istanbul. Furthermore, as Istanbul is a large and rapidly expanding city, its urban heat island has been intensifying the effects of climate change.[95] Considering past data,[124] it is very likely that these two factors are responsible for urban Istanbul's shift, from a warm-summer climate to a hot-summer one in the Köppen climate classification, and from the cool temperate zone to the warm temperate/subtropical zone in the Trewartha climate classification.[125][126][127] If trends continue, sea level rise is likely to affect city infrastructure, for example Kadıkoy metro station is threatened with flooding.[128] Xeriscaping of green spaces has been suggested,[129] and Istanbul has a climate-change action plan.[130]

Istanbul's districts extend far from the city center, along the full length of the Bosporus (with the Black Sea at the top and the Sea of Marmara at the bottom of the map).

Since 2004, the municipal boundaries of Istanbul have been coincident with the boundaries of its province.[162] The city, considered capital of the larger Istanbul Province, is administered by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI), which oversees the 39 districts of the city-province.

The current city structure can be traced back to the Tanzimat period of reform in the 19th century, before which Islamic judges and imams led the city under the auspices of the Grand Vizier. Following the model of French cities, this religious system was replaced by a mayor and a citywide council composed of representatives of the confessional groups (millet) across the city. Pera (now Beyoğlu) was the first area of the city to have its own director and council, with members instead being longtime residents of the neighborhood.[163] Laws enacted after the Ottoman constitution of 1876 aimed to expand this structure across the city, imitating the twenty arrondissements of Paris, but they were not fully implemented until 1908 when the city was declared a province with nine constituent districts.[164][165] This system continued beyond the founding of the Turkish Republic, with the province renamed a belediye (municipality), but the municipality was disbanded in 1957.[166]

Statue of Atatürk in Büyükada, the largest of the Prince Islands to the southeast of Istanbul, which collectively form the Adalar (Isles) district of Istanbul Province

Small settlements adjacent to major population centers in Turkey, including Istanbul, were merged into their respective primary cities during the early 1980s, resulting in metropolitan municipalities.[167][168] The main decision-making body of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is the Municipal Council, with members drawn from district councils.

The Municipal Council is responsible for citywide issues, including managing the budget, maintaining civic infrastructure, and overseeing museums and major cultural centers.[169] Since the government operates under a "powerful mayor, weak council" approach, the council's leader—the metropolitan mayor—has the authority to make swift decisions, often at the expense of transparency.[170] The Municipal Council is advised by the Metropolitan Executive Committee, although the committee also has limited power to make decisions of its own.[171] All representatives on the committee are appointed by the metropolitan mayor and the council, with the mayor—or someone of his or her choosing—serving as head.[171][172]

District councils are chiefly responsible for waste management and construction projects within their respective districts. They each maintain their own budgets, although the metropolitan mayor reserves the right to review district decisions. One-fifth of all district council members, including the district mayors, also represent their districts in the Municipal Council.[169] All members of the district councils and the Municipal Council, including the metropolitan mayor, are elected to five-year terms.[173] Representing the Republican People's Party, Ekrem İmamoğlu has been the Mayor of Istanbul since 27 June 2019.[174]

With the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Istanbul Province having equivalent jurisdictions, few responsibilities remain for the provincial government. Like the MMI, the Istanbul Special Provincial Administration has a governor, a democratically elected decision-making body—the Provincial Parliament—and an appointed Executive Committee. Mirroring the executive committee at the municipal level, the Provincial Executive Committee includes a secretary-general and leaders of departments that advise the Provincial Parliament.[172][175] The Provincial Administration's duties are largely limited to the building and maintenance of schools, residences, government buildings, and roads, and the promotion of arts, culture, and nature conservation.[176] Ali Yerlikaya has been the Governor of Istanbul Province since 26 October 2018.[177]

Throughout most of its history, Istanbul has ranked among the largest cities in the world. By 500 CE, Constantinople had somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people, edging out its predecessor, Rome, for the world's largest city.[180] Constantinople jostled with other major historical cities, such as Baghdad, Chang'an, Kaifeng and Merv for the position of the world's largest city until the 12th century. It never returned to being the world's largest, but remained the largest city in Europe from 1500 to 1750, when it was surpassed by London.[181]

The Turkish Statistical Institute estimates that the population of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality was 15,519,267 at the end of 2019, hosting 19 percent of the country's population.[182] 64.4% of the residents live on the European side and 35.6% on the Asian side.[182]

Istanbul ranks as the seventh-largest city proper in the world, and the second-largest urban agglomeration in Europe, after Moscow.[183][184] The city's annual population growth of 1.5 percent ranks as one of the highest among the seventy-eight largest metropolises in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The high population growth mirrors an urbanization trend across the country, as the second and third fastest-growing OECD metropolises are the Turkish cities of Izmir and Ankara.[16]

Istanbul experienced especially rapid growth during the second half of the 20th century, with its population increasing tenfold between 1950 and 2000.[185] This growth was fueled by internal and international migration. Istanbul's foreign population with a residence permit increased dramatically, from 43,000 in 2007[186] to 856,377 in 2019.[187][188]

According to 2020 TÜİK data around 2.1 million people in a population of over 15.4 million have been registered[lower-alpha 6] in Istanbul, meanwhile the vast majority of the residents ultimately originate from Anatolian provinces, especially those in the Black Sea, Central and Eastern Anatolia regions due to internal migration since the 1950s.[189] People registered in Kastamonu, Ordu, Giresun, Erzurum, Samsun, Malatya, Trabzon, Sinop and Rize provinces represent the biggest population groups in Istanbul, meanwhile people registered in Sivas has the highest percentage with more than 760 thousand residents in the city.[190] A 2019 survey found that only 36% of the Istanbul's population was born in the province.[191]

Ethnic and religious groups

See also: Assyrians in Turkey, Kurds in Istanbul, Bosniaks in Turkey, Greeks in Turkey, Armenians in Turkey, Jews in Turkey, and Albanians in Turkey

Ethnic groups among Turkish citizens in Istanbul (2019 KONDA survey)
Turks			78%
Kurds			17%
Zazas			1%
Arabs			1%
Others			3%

Istanbul has been a cosmopolitan city throughout much of its history, but it has become more homogenized since the end of the Ottoman era. The dominant ethnic group in the city is Turkish people, which also forms the majority group in Turkey. According to survey data 78% of the voting-age Turkish citizens in Istanbul state "Turkish" as their ethnic identity.[191]

With estimates ranging from 2 to 4 million, Kurds form one of the largest ethnic minorities in Istanbul and are the biggest group after Turks among Turkish citizens.[192][193] According to a 2019 KONDA study, Kurds constituted around 17% of Istanbul's adult total population who were Turkish citizens.[191] Although the Kurdish presence in the city dates back to the early Ottoman period,[194] the majority of Kurds in the city originate from villages in eastern and southeastern Turkey.[195] Zazas are also present in the city and constitute around 1% of the total voting-age population.[191]

Arabs form the city's other largest ethnic minority, with an estimated population of more than 2 million.[196] Following Turkey's support for the Arab Spring, Istanbul emerged as a hub for dissidents from across the Arab world, including former presidential candidates from Egypt, Kuwaiti MPs, and former ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia (including Jamal Khashoggi), Syria, and Yemen.[197][198][199] The number of refugees of the Syrian Civil War in Turkey residing in Istanbul is estimated to be around 1 million.[200] Native Arab population in Turkey who are Turkish citizens are found to be making up less than 1% of city's total adult population.[191]

Built by Suleiman the Magnificent, the Süleymaniye Mosque (1550–1557) was designed by his chief architect Mimar Sinan, the most illustrious of all Ottoman architects.[155]

2019 survey study by KONDA that examined the religiosity of the voting-age adults in Istanbul showed that 57% of the surveyed had a religion and were trying to practise its requirements. This was followed by nonobservant people with 26% who identified with a religion but generally did not practise its requirements. 11% stated they were fully devoted to their religion, meanwhile 6% were non-believers who did not believe the rules and requirements of a religion. 24% of the surveyed also identified themselves as "religious conservatives". Around 90% of Istanbul's population are Sunni Muslims and Alevism forms the second biggest religious group.[191][201]

Into the 19th century, the Christians of Istanbul tended to be either Greek Orthodox, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church or Catholic Levantines.[202] Greeks and Armenians form the largest Christian population in the city. While Istanbul's Greek population was exempted from the 1923 population exchange with Greece, changes in tax status and the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom prompted thousands to leave.[203] Following Greek migration to the city for work in the 2010s, the Greek population rose to nearly 3,000 in 2019, still greatly diminished since 1919, when it stood at 350,000.[203] There are today 50,000 to 70,000 Armenians in Istanbul[204] down from a peak of 164,000 in 1913.[205] As of 2019, an estimated 18,000 of the country's 25,000 Christian Assyrians live in Istanbul.[206]

There are 234 active churches in the city,[207] including the Church of St. Anthony of Padua on İstiklal Avenue, in the district of Beyoğlu (Pera).

The majority of the Catholic Levantines (Turkish: Levanten) in Istanbul and Izmir are the descendants of traders/colonists from the Italian maritime republics of the Mediterranean (especially Genoa and Venice) and France, who obtained special rights and privileges called the Capitulations from the Ottoman sultans in the 16th century.[208] The community had more than 15,000 members during Atatürk's presidency in the 1920s and 1930s, but today is reduced to only a few hundreds, according to Italo-Levantine writer Giovanni Scognamillo.[209] They continue to live in Istanbul (mostly in Karaköy, Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı), and Izmir (mostly in Karşıyaka, Bornova and Buca).

Istanbul became one of the world's most important Jewish centers in the 16th and 17th century.[210] Romaniote and Ashkenazi communities existed in Istanbul before the conquest of Istanbul, but it was the arrival of Sephardic Jews that ushered a period of cultural flourishing. Sephardic Jews settled in the city after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497.[210] Sympathetic to the plight of Sephardic Jews, Bayezid II sent out the Ottoman Navy under the command of admiral Kemal Reis to Spain in 1492 in order to evacuate them safely to Ottoman lands.[210] In marked contrast to Jews in Europe, Ottoman Jews were allowed to work in any profession.[211] Ottoman Jews in Istanbul excelled in commerce, and came to particularly dominate the medical profession.[211] By 1711, using the printing press, books came to be published in Spanish and Ladino, Yiddish, and Hebrew.[212] In large part due to emigration to Israel, the Jewish population in the city dropped from 100,000 in 1950[213] to 15,000 in 2021.[214][215][216]

Politically, Istanbul is seen as the most important administrative region in Turkey. In the run-up to local elections in 2019, Erdoğan claimed 'if we fail in Istanbul, we will fail in Turkey'.[217] The contest in Istanbul carried deep political, economic and symbolic significance for Erdoğan, whose election of mayor of Istanbul in 1994 had served as his launchpad.[218] For Ekrem İmamoğlu, winning the mayorlty of Istanbul was a huge moral victory, but for Erdoğan it had practical ramifications: His party, AKP, lost control of the $4.8 billion municipal budget, which had sustained patronage at the point of delivery of many public services for 25 years.[219]

Ekrem İmamoğlu of the CHP is the 32nd and current Mayor of Istanbul, elected in 2019.

More recently, Istanbul and many of Turkey's metropolitan cities are following a trend away from the government and their right-wing ideology. In 2013 and 2014, large-scale anti-AKP government protests began in İstanbul and spread throughout the nation. This trend first became evident electorally in the 2014 mayoral election where the center-left opposition candidate won an impressive 40% of the vote, despite not winning. The first government defeat in Istanbul occurred in the 2017 constitutional referendum, where Istanbul voted 'No' by 51.4% to 48.6%. The AKP government had supported a 'Yes' vote and won the vote nationally due to high support in rural parts of the country. The biggest defeat for the government came in the 2019 local elections, where their candidate for Mayor, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, was defeated by a very narrow margin by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. İmamoğlu won the vote with 48.77% of the vote, against Yıldırım's 48.61%, but the elections were controversially annulled by the Supreme Electoral Council due to AKP's claim of electoral fraud. In the re-run İmamoğlu gathered 54.22% of the total vote and widened the defeat margin.[220]

Administratively, Istanbul is divided into 39 districts, more than any other province in Turkey. Istanbul Province sends 98 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which has a total of 600 seats. For the purpose of parliamentary elections, Istanbul is divided into three electoral districts; two on the European side and one on the Asian side, electing 28, 35 and 35 MPs respectively.

A view of Dolmabahçe Palace and the skyscrapers of Levent financial district in the background.[221][222] Providing the only sea route to the Black Sea, the Bosporus is the world's busiest waterway that is used for international navigation.[15]

A view of Levent[221][222] financial district from Istanbul Sapphire. Levent, Maslak, Şişli and Ataşehir are the main business districts in the city.

Istanbul had the eleventh-largest economy among the world's urban areas in 2018, and is responsible for 30 percent of Turkey's industrial output,[223] 31 percent of GDP,[223] and 47 percent of tax revenues.[223] The city's gross domestic product adjusted by PPP stood at US$537.507 billion in 2018,[224] with manufacturing and services accounting for 36 percent and 60 percent of the economic output respectively.[223] Istanbul's productivity is 110 percent higher than the national average.[223] Trade is economically important, accounting for 30 percent of the economic output in the city.[15] In 2019, companies based in Istanbul produced exports worth $83.66 billion and received imports totaling $128.34 billion; these figures were equivalent to 47 percent and 61 percent, respectively, of the national totals.[225]

Istanbul, which straddles the Bosporus strait, houses international ports that link Europe and Asia. The Bosporus, providing the only passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, is the world's busiest and narrowest strait used for international navigation, with more than 200 million tons of oil passing through it each year.[226] International conventions guarantee passage between the Black and the Mediterranean seas,[227] even when tankers carry oil, LNG/LPG, chemicals, and other flammable or explosive materials as cargo. In 2011, as a workaround solution, the then Prime Minister Erdoğan presented Canal Istanbul, a project to open a new strait between the Black and Marmara seas.[227] While the project was still on Turkey's agenda in 2020, there has not been a clear date set for it.[15]

Deutsche Orientbank AG (1906) in Sirkeci

Shipping is a significant part of the city's economy, with 73.9 percent of exports and 92.7 percent of imports in 2018 executed by sea.[15] Istanbul has three major shipping ports – the Port of Haydarpaşa, the Port of Ambarlı, and the Port of Zeytinburnu – as well as several smaller ports and oil terminals along the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara.[15]

Haydarpaşa, at the southeastern end of the Bosporus, was Istanbul's largest port until the early 2000s.[228] Since then operations were shifted to Ambarlı, with plans to convert Haydarpaşa into a tourism complex.[15] In 2019, Ambarlı, on the western edge of the urban center, had an annual capacity of 3,104,882 TEUs, making it the third-largest cargo terminal in the Mediterranean basin.[228]

Istanbul has been an international banking hub since the 1980s,[15] and is home to the only active stock exchange in Turkey, Borsa Istanbul, which was originally established as the Ottoman Stock Exchange in 1866.[229]

Ottoman Central Bank Head Office (1892) on Bankalar Caddesi

In 1995, keeping up with the financial trends, Borsa Istanbul moved its headquarters (which was originally located on Bankalar Caddesi, the financial center of the Ottoman Empire,[229] and later at the 4th Vakıf Han building in Sirkeci) to İstinye, in the vicinity of Maslak, which hosts the headquarters of numerous Turkish banks.[230]

By 2023, the Ataşehir district on the Asian side of the city will host the new headquarters of a number of state-owned Turkish banks, including the Central Bank of Turkey, currently headquartered in Ankara.[231][232]

13.4 million foreign tourists visited the city in 2018, making Istanbul the world's fifth most-visited city in that year.[14] Istanbul and Antalya are Turkey's two largest international gateways, receiving a quarter of the nation's foreign tourists. Istanbul has more than fifty museums, with the Topkapı Palace, the most visited museum in the city, bringing in more than $30 million in revenue each year.[15]

Istanbul expects 1 million tourists from cruise companies after the renovation of its cruise port, also known as Galataport in Karaköy district.[233]

Yalı houses on the Bosporus are among the frequently used settings in Turkish television dramas (dizi).

Istanbul was historically known as a cultural hub, but its cultural scene stagnated after the Turkish Republic shifted its focus toward Ankara.[234] The new national government established programs that served to orient Turks toward musical traditions, especially those originating in Europe, but musical institutions and visits by foreign classical artists were primarily centered in the new capital.[235]

Much of Turkey's cultural scene had its roots in Istanbul, and by the 1980s and 1990s Istanbul reemerged globally as a city whose cultural significance is not solely based on its past glory.[236]

By the end of the 19th century, Istanbul had established itself as a regional artistic center, with Turkish, European, and Middle Eastern artists flocking to the city. Despite efforts to make Ankara Turkey's cultural heart, Istanbul had the country's primary institution of art until the 1970s.[237] When additional universities and art journals were founded in Istanbul during the 1980s, artists formerly based in Ankara moved in.[238]

The Istanbul Archaeology Museums, founded by Osman Hamdi Bey in 1891, form Turkey's oldest modern museum.[239]

Beyoğlu has been transformed into the artistic center of the city, with young artists and older Turkish artists formerly residing abroad finding footing there. Modern art museums, including İstanbul State Art and Sculpture Museum, National Palaces Painting Museum, İstanbul Modern, the Pera Museum, Sakıp Sabancı Museum and SantralIstanbul, opened in the 2000s to complement the exhibition spaces and auction houses that have already contributed to the cosmopolitan nature of the city.[240] These museums have yet to attain the popularity of older museums on the historic peninsula, including the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, which ushered in the era of modern museums in Turkey, and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum.[239]

The restored Paket Postanesi (Parcel Post Office) building is now a symbol of Galataport. The district is also home to Museums Square.

The first film screening in Turkey was at Yıldız Palace in 1896, a year after the technology publicly debuted in Paris.[241] Movie theaters rapidly cropped up in Beyoğlu, with the greatest concentration of theaters being along the street now known as İstiklal Avenue.[242] Istanbul also became the heart of Turkey's nascent film industry, although Turkish films were not consistently developed until the 1950s.[243] Since then, Istanbul has been the most popular location to film Turkish dramas and comedies.[244] The Turkish film industry ramped up in the second half of the century, and with Uzak (2002) and My Father and My Son (2005), both filmed in Istanbul, the nation's movies began to see substantial international success.[245] Istanbul and its picturesque skyline have also served as a backdrop for several foreign films, including From Russia with Love (1963), Topkapi (1964), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Mission Istaanbul (2008).[246]

Coinciding with this cultural reemergence was the establishment of the Istanbul Festival, which began showcasing a variety of art from Turkey and around the world in 1973. From this flagship festival came the International Istanbul Film Festival and the Istanbul International Jazz Festival in the early 1980s. With its focus now solely on music and dance, the Istanbul Festival has been known as the Istanbul International Music Festival since 1994.[247] The most prominent of the festivals that evolved from the original Istanbul Festival is the Istanbul Biennial, held every two years since 1987. Its early incarnations were aimed at showcasing Turkish visual art, and it has since opened to international artists and risen in prestige to join the elite biennales, alongside the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Art Biennial.[248]

Leisure and entertainment

Abdi İpekçi Street in Nişantaşı, Galataport Shopping Area in Karaköy and Bağdat Avenue on the Anatolian side of the city have evolved into high-end shopping districts.[249][250] Other focal points for shopping, leisure and entertainment include Nişantaşı, Ortaköy, Bebek, and Kadıköy.[251] The city has numerous shopping centers, from the historic to the modern. Istanbul also has an active nightlife and historic taverns, a signature characteristic of the city for centuries, if not millennia.

Around three million people visit İstiklal Avenue on weekend days

The Grand Bazaar, in operation since 1461, is among the world's oldest and largest covered markets.[252][253] Mahmutpasha Bazaar is an open-air market extending between the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Bazaar, which has been Istanbul's major spice market since 1660.

Galleria Ataköy ushered in the age of modern shopping malls in Turkey when it opened in 1987.[254] Since then, malls have become major shopping centers outside the historic peninsula. Akmerkez was awarded the titles of "Europe's best" and "World's best" shopping mall by the International Council of Shopping Centers in 1995 and 1996; Istanbul Cevahir has been one of the continent's largest since opening in 2005; Kanyon won the Cityscape Architectural Review Award in the Commercial Built category in 2006.[253]

İstinye Park in İstinye and Zorlu Center near Levent are among the newest malls which include the stores of the world's top fashion brands.

Süreyya Opera House

Along İstiklal Avenue is the Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage), a 19th-century shopping gallery which is today home to winehouses (known as meyhanes), pubs and restaurants.[255] İstiklal Avenue, originally known for its taverns, has shifted toward shopping, but the nearby Nevizade Street is still lined with winehouses and pubs.[256][257] Some other neighborhoods around İstiklal Avenue have been revamped to cater to Beyoğlu's nightlife, with formerly commercial streets now lined with pubs, cafes, and restaurants playing live music.[258]

Zorlu Center, designed by EAA and Tabanlıoğlu Architects

Istanbul is known for its historic seafood restaurants. Many of the city's most popular and upscale seafood restaurants line the shores of the Bosporus (particularly in neighborhoods like Ortaköy, Bebek, Arnavutköy, Yeniköy, Beylerbeyi and Çengelköy). Kumkapı along the Sea of Marmara has a pedestrian zone that hosts around fifty fish restaurants.[259]

The Princes' Islands, 15 kilometers (9 mi) from the city center, are also popular for their seafood restaurants. Because of their restaurants, historic summer mansions, and tranquil, car-free streets, the Prince Islands are a popular vacation destination among Istanbulites and foreign tourists.[260]

Istanbul is also famous for its sophisticated and elaborately-cooked dishes of the Ottoman cuisine. Following the influx of immigrants from southeastern and eastern Turkey, which began in the 1960s, the city's foodscape has drastically changed by the end of the century; with influences of Middle Eastern cuisine such as kebab taking an important place in the food scene.

Restaurants featuring foreign cuisines are mainly concentrated in the Beyoğlu, Beşiktaş, Şişli and Kadıköy districts.

Istanbul Pride is held for the first time in 2003. Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country to held a gay pride march. It was also the first gay pride in Middle East and Balkans.[261]

1. Atatürk Olympic Stadium
2. Nef Stadium
3. Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium
4. Vodafone Park

Istanbul is home to some of Turkey's oldest sports clubs. Beşiktaş JK, established in 1903, is considered the oldest of these sports clubs. Due to its initial status as Turkey's only club, Beşiktaş occasionally represented the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic in international sports competitions, earning the right to place the Turkish flag inside its team logo.[262] Galatasaray SK and Fenerbahçe SK have fared better in international competitions and have won more Süper Lig titles, at 22 and 19 times, respectively.[263][264][265] Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have a long-standing rivalry, with Galatasaray based in the European part and Fenerbahçe based in the Anatolian part of the city.[264] Istanbul has seven basketball teams—Anadolu Efes, Beşiktaş, Darüşşafaka, Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyespor and Büyükçekmece—that play in the premier-level Turkish Basketball Super League.[266]

Many of Istanbul's sports facilities have been built or upgraded since 2000 to bolster the city's bids for the Summer Olympic Games. Atatürk Olympic Stadium, the largest multi-purpose stadium in Turkey, was completed in 2002 as an IAAF first-class venue for track and field.[267] The stadium hosted the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final, and was selected by the UEFA to host the CL Final games of 2020 and 2021, which were relocated to Lisbon (2020) and Porto (2021) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[268] Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium, Fenerbahçe's home field, hosted the 2009 UEFA Cup Final three years after its completion. Türk Telekom Arena opened in 2011 to replace Ali Sami Yen Stadium as Galatasaray's home turf,[269][270] while Vodafone Park, opened in 2016 to replace BJK İnönü Stadium as the home turf of Beşiktaş, hosted the 2019 UEFA Super Cup game. All four stadiums are elite Category 4 (formerly five-star) UEFA stadiums.[lower-alpha 7]

The Sinan Erdem Dome, among the largest indoor arenas in Europe, hosted the final of the 2010 FIBA World Championship, the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, as well as the 2011–12 Euroleague and 2016–17 EuroLeague Final Fours.[274] Prior to the completion of the Sinan Erdem Dome in 2010, Abdi İpekçi Arena was Istanbul's primary indoor arena, having hosted the finals of EuroBasket 2001.[275] Several other indoor arenas, including the Beşiktaş Akatlar Arena, have also been inaugurated since 2000, serving as the home courts of Istanbul's sports clubs. The most recent of these is the 13,800-seat Ülker Sports Arena, which opened in 2012 as the home court of Fenerbahçe's basketball teams.[276] Despite the construction boom, five bids for the Summer Olympics—in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2020—and national bids for UEFA Euro 2012 and UEFA Euro 2016 have ended unsuccessfully.[277]

The TVF Burhan Felek Sport Hall is one of the major volleyball arenas in the city and hosts clubs such as Eczacıbaşı VitrA, Vakıfbank SK, and Fenerbahçe who have won numerous European and World Championship titles.

Between the 2005–2011 seasons,[278] and in the 2020 season,[279] Istanbul Park racing circuit hosted the Formula One Turkish Grand Prix. The 2021 F1 Turkish Grand Prix was initially cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[280] but on 25 June 2021, it was announced that the 2021 F1 Turkish Grand Prix will take place on 3 October 2021.[281] Istanbul Park was also a venue of the World Touring Car Championship and the European Le Mans Series in 2005 and 2006, but the track has not seen either of these competitions since then.[282][283] It also hosted the Turkish Motorcycle Grand Prix between 2005 and 2007. Istanbul was occasionally a venue of the F1 Powerboat World Championship, with the last race on the Bosporus strait on 12–13 August 2000.[284] The last race of the Powerboat P1 World Championship on the Bosporus took place on 19–21 June 2009.[285] Istanbul Sailing Club, established in 1952, hosts races and other sailing events on the waterways in and around Istanbul each year.[286][287]

Küçük Çamlıca TV Radio Tower (369 m (1,211 ft)) is the tallest structure in the city.[288]

Most state-run radio and television stations are based in Ankara, but Istanbul is the primary hub of Turkish media. The industry has its roots in the former Ottoman capital, where the first Turkish newspaper, Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Affairs), was published in 1831. The Cağaloğlu street on which the newspaper was printed, Bâb-ı Âli Street, rapidly became the center of Turkish print media, alongside Beyoğlu across the Golden Horn.[289]

Istanbul now has a wide variety of periodicals. Most nationwide newspapers are based in Istanbul, with simultaneous Ankara and İzmir editions.[290] Hürriyet, Sabah, Posta and Sözcü, the country's top four papers, are all headquartered in Istanbul, boasting more than 275,000 weekly sales each.[291] Hürriyet's English-language edition, Hürriyet Daily News, has been printed since 1961, but the English-language Daily Sabah, first published by Sabah in 2014, has overtaken it in circulation. Several smaller newspapers, including popular publications like Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk are also based in Istanbul.[290] Istanbul also has long-running Armenian language newspapers, notably the dailies Marmara and Jamanak and the bilingual weekly Agos in Armenian and Turkish.

Radio broadcasts in Istanbul date back to 1927, when Turkey's first radio transmission came from atop the Central Post Office in Eminönü. Control of this transmission, and other radio stations established in the following decades, ultimately came under the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which held a monopoly on radio and television broadcasts between its founding in 1964 and 1990.[292] Today, TRT runs four national radio stations; these stations have transmitters across the country so each can reach over 90 percent of the country's population, but only Radio 2 is based in Istanbul. Offering a range of content from educational programming to coverage of sporting events, Radio 2 is the most popular radio station in Turkey.[292] Istanbul's airwaves are the busiest in Turkey, primarily featuring either Turkish-language or English-language content. One of the exceptions, offering both, is Açık Radyo (94.9 FM). Among Turkey's first private stations, and the first featuring foreign popular music, was Istanbul's Metro FM (97.2 FM). The state-run Radio 3, although based in Ankara, also features English-language popular music, and English-language news programming is provided on NTV Radyo (102.8 FM).[293]

TRT-Children is the only TRT television station based in Istanbul.[294] Istanbul is home to the headquarters of several Turkish stations and regional headquarters of international media outlets. Istanbul-based Star TV was the first private television network to be established following the end of the TRT monopoly; Star TV and Show TV (also based in Istanbul) remain highly popular throughout the country, airing Turkish and American series.[295] Kanal D and ATV are other stations in Istanbul that offer a mix of news and series; NTV (partnered with U.S. media outlet MSNBC) and Sky Turk—both based in the city—are mainly just known for their news coverage in Turkish. The BBC has a regional office in Istanbul, assisting its Turkish-language news operations, and the American news channel CNN established the Turkish-language CNN Türk there in 1999.[296]

Main entrance gate of Istanbul University, the city's oldest Turkish institution, established in 1453.

In 2015, more than 57,000 students attended 7,934 schools,[297] including the renowned Galatasaray High School, Kabataş Erkek Lisesi, and Istanbul Lisesi. Galatasaray High School was established in 1481 and is the oldest public high school in Turkey.[297]

Some of the most renowned and highly ranked universities in Turkey are in Istanbul. Istanbul University, the nation's oldest institute of higher education, dates back to 1453 and its dental, law, medical schools were founded in the 19th century.

Istanbul has more than 93 colleges and universities,[297] with 400,000 students[298] enrolled in 2016. The city's largest private universities include Sabancı University, with its main campus in Tuzla, Koç University in Sarıyer, Özyeğin Üniversitesi near Altunizade. Istanbul's first private university, Koç University, was founded as late as 1992, because private universities were not allowed in Turkey before the 1982 amendment to the constitution.[297]

Maçka (left) and Taşkışla (right) campuses of Istanbul Technical University

Public universities with a major presence in the city, such as Istanbul University, Istanbul Technical University (the world's third-oldest university dedicated entirely to engineering, established in 1773), and Boğaziçi University (formerly the higher education section of Robert College until 1971) provide education in English as the primary foreign language, while the primary foreign language of education at Galatasaray University is French (as is the case at Galatasaray High School).[297]

Istanbul is also home to several conservatories and art schools, including Mimar Sinan Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1882.[299]

Istanbul's first water supply systems date back to the city's early history, when aqueducts (such as the Valens Aqueduct) deposited the water in the city's numerous cisterns.[300] At the behest of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Kırkçeşme water supply network was constructed; by 1563, the network provided 4,200 cubic meters (150,000 cu ft) of water to 158 sites each day.[300] In later years, in response to increasing public demand, water from various springs was channeled to public fountains, like the Fountain of Ahmed III, by means of supply lines.[301] Today, Istanbul has a chlorinated and filtered water supply and a sewage treatment system managed by the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration (İstanbul Su ve Kanalizasyon İdaresi, İSKİ).[302]

The Silahtarağa Power Station, known as SantralIstanbul, part of the Istanbul Bilgi University, was Istanbul's sole source of power between 1914 and 1952.

The Silahtarağa Power Station, a coal-fired power plant along the Golden Horn, was the sole source of Istanbul's electricity between 1914, when its first engine room was completed, and 1952.[303] Following the founding of the Turkish Republic, the plant underwent renovations to accommodate the city's increasing demand; its capacity grew from 23 megawatts in 1923 to a peak of 120 megawatts in 1956.[303][304] Capacity declined until the power station reached the end of its economic life and shut down in 1983.[303] The state-run Turkish Electrical Authority (TEK) briefly—between its founding in 1970 and 1984—held a monopoly on the generation and distribution of electricity, but now the authority—since split between the Turkish Electricity Generation Transmission Company (TEAŞ) and the Turkish Electricity Distribution Company (TEDAŞ)—competes with private electric utilities.[304]

The Ottoman Ministry of Post and Telegraph was established in 1840 and the first post office, the Imperial Post Office, opened near the courtyard of Yeni Mosque. By 1876, the first international mailing network between Istanbul and the lands beyond the Ottoman Empire had been established.[305] Sultan Abdülmecid I issued Samuel Morse his first official honor for the telegraph in 1847, and construction of the first telegraph line—between Istanbul and Edirne—finished in time to announce the end of the Crimean War in 1856.[306]

The Grand Post Office in Sirkeci, Istanbul, was designed by Vedat Tek in the Turkish neoclassical style of the early 20th century.[307]

A nascent telephone system began to emerge in Istanbul in 1881 and after the first manual telephone exchange became operational in Istanbul in 1909, the Ministry of Post and Telegraph became the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone.[305][308] GSM cellular networks arrived in Turkey in 1994, with Istanbul among the first cities to receive the service.[309] Today, mobile and landline service is provided by private companies, after Türk Telekom, which split from the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone in 1995, was privatized in 2005.[305][309] Postal services remain under the purview of what is now the Post and Telegraph Organization (retaining the acronym PTT).[305]

In 2000, Istanbul had 137 hospitals, of which 100 were private.[310] Turkish citizens are entitled to subsidized healthcare in the nation's state-run hospitals.[290] As public hospitals tend to be overcrowded or otherwise slow, private hospitals are preferable for those who can afford them. Their prevalence has increased significantly over the last decade, as the percentage of outpatients using private hospitals increased from 6 percent to 23 percent between 2005 and 2009.[290][311] Many of these private hospitals, as well as some of the public hospitals, are equipped with high-tech equipment, including MRI machines, or associated with medical research centers.[312] Turkey has more hospitals accredited by the U.S.-based Joint Commission than any other country in the world, with most concentrated in its big cities. The high quality of healthcare, especially in private hospitals, has contributed to a recent upsurge in medical tourism to Turkey (with a 40 percent increase between 2007 and 2008).[313] Laser eye surgery is particularly common among medical tourists, as Turkey is known for specializing in the procedure.[314]

The suspension bridges on the Bosporus strait

15 July Martyrs Bridge

Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge

Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge

Istanbul's motorways network are the O-1, O-2, O-3, O-4 and O-7. The total length of Istanbul Province's toll motorways network (otoyollar) is 543 km (2021) and the state highways network (devlet yollari) is 353 km (2021), totaling 896 km of expressway roads (minimum 2x2 lanes), excluding secondary roads and urban streets.[315][316][317] The density of expressway network is 16.8 km/100 km². The O-1 forms the city's inner ring road, traversing the 15 July Martyrs (First Bosphorus) Bridge, and the O-2 is the city's outer ring road, crossing the Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Second Bosphorus) Bridge. The O-2 continues west to Edirne and the O-4 continues east to Ankara. The O-2, O-3, and O-4 are part of European route E80 (the Trans-European Motorway) between Portugal and the Iran–Turkey border.[318] In 2011, the first and second bridges on the Bosphorus carried 400,000 vehicles each day.[319] The O-7[320] or Kuzey Marmara Otoyolu, is a motorway that bypass Istanbul to the north. The O-7 motorway from Kinali Gişeleri to Istanbul Park Service has 139.2 km, with 8 lanes (4x4), and from Odayeri-K10 to Istanbul Atatürk Airport has 30.4 km.[317] The completed section of highway crosses the Bosphorus Strait via the Yavuz Sultan Selim (Third Bosphorus) Bridge, entered service on 26 August 2016.[321] The O-7 motorway connects Istanbul Atatürk Airport with Istanbul Airport. Environmentalist groups worry that the third bridge will endanger the remaining green areas to the north of Istanbul.[322][323] Apart from the three Bosphorus Bridges, the dual-deck, 14.6-kilometer (9.1 mi) Eurasia Tunnel (which entered service on 20 December 2016) under the Bosphorus strait also provides road crossings for motor vehicles between the Asian and European sides of Turkey.[324]

Istanbul's nostalgic and modern tram systems

Istanbul's local public transportation system is a network of commuter trains, trams, funiculars, metro lines, buses, bus rapid transit, and ferries. Fares across modes are integrated, using the contactless Istanbulkart, introduced in 2009, or the older Akbil electronic ticket device.[325] Trams in Istanbul date back to 1872, when they were horse-drawn, but even the first electrified trams were decommissioned in the 1960s.[326] Operated by Istanbul Electricity, Tramway and Tunnels General Management (İETT), trams slowly returned to the city in the 1990s with the introduction of a nostalgic route and a faster modern tram line, which now carries 265,000 passengers each day.[326][327] The Tünel opened in 1875 as the world's second-oldest subterranean rail line (after London's Metropolitan Railway).[326] It still carries passengers between Karaköy and İstiklal Avenue along a steep 573-meter (1,880 ft) track; a more modern funicular between Taksim Square and Kabataş began running in 2006.[328][329]

Boğaziçi University station of the Istanbul Metro

Marmaray commuter rail at Ayrılıkçeşmesi station

The Istanbul Metro comprises eight lines (the M1, M2, M3, M6, M7 and M9 on the European side, and the M4 and M5 on the Asian side) with several other lines (M8, M12 and M11) and extensions under construction.[330][331] The two sides of Istanbul's metro are connected under the Bosphorus by the Marmaray Tunnel, inaugurated in 2013 as the first rail connection between Thrace and Anatolia, having 13.5 km length.[332] The Marmaray tunnel together with the suburban railways lines along the Sea of Marmara, is part of intercontinental commuter rail line in Istanbul, from Halkalı on the European side to Gebze on the Asian side. Marmaray rail line has 76.6 km, and the full line opened on 12 March 2019.[333] Until then, buses provide transportation within and between the two-halves of the city, accommodating 2.2 million passenger trips each day.[334] The Metrobus, a form of bus rapid transit, crosses the Bosphorus Bridge, with dedicated lanes leading to its termini.[335]

İDO (Istanbul Seabuses) runs a combination of all-passenger ferries and car-and-passenger ferries to ports on both sides of the Bosphorus, as far north as the Black Sea.[336][337] With additional destinations around the Sea of Marmara, İDO runs the largest municipal ferry operation in the world.[338] The city's main cruise ship terminal is the Port of Istanbul in Karaköy, with a capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour.[339] Most visitors enter Istanbul by air, but about half a million foreign tourists enter the city by sea each year.[340]

Originally opened in 1873 with a smaller terminal building as the main terminus of the Rumelia (Balkan) Railway of the Ottoman Empire, which connected Istanbul with Vienna, the current Sirkeci Terminal building was constructed between 1888 and 1890, and became the eastern terminus of the Orient Express from Paris.[341]

International rail service from Istanbul launched in 1889, with a line between Bucharest and Istanbul's Sirkeci Terminal, which ultimately became famous as the eastern terminus of the Orient Express from Paris.[76] Regular service to Bucharest and Thessaloniki continued until the early 2010s, when the former was interrupted for Marmaray construction but started running again in 2019 and the latter was halted due to economic problems in Greece.[342][343] After Istanbul's Haydarpaşa Terminal opened in 1908, it served as the western terminus of the Baghdad Railway and an extension of the Hejaz Railway; today, neither service is offered directly from Istanbul.[344][345][346] Service to Ankara and other points across Turkey is normally offered by Turkish State Railways, but the construction of Marmaray and the Ankara-Istanbul high-speed line forced the station to close in 2012.[347] New stations to replace both the Haydarpaşa and Sirkeci terminals, and connect the city's disjointed railway networks, now the Marmaray second phase opened to the public.[347] Private bus companies still operation to this day. Istanbul's main bus station is the largest in Europe, with a daily capacity of 15,000 buses and 600,000 passengers, serving destinations as distant as Frankfurt.[348][349]

Istanbul had three large international airports, two of which currently serve commercial passenger flights. The largest is the new Istanbul Airport, opened in 2018 in the Arnavutköy district to the northwest of the city center, on the European side, near the Black Sea coast.

Istanbul Airport

Sabiha Gökçen Airport

All scheduled commercial passenger flights were transferred from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to Istanbul Airport on 6 April 2019, following the closure of Istanbul Atatürk Airport for scheduled passenger flights.[350] The IATA airport code IST was also transferred to the new airport.[351] Once all phases are completed in 2025, the airport will have six sets of runways (eight in total), 16 taxiways, and will be able to accommodate 200 million passengers a year.[352][353] The transfer from the airport to the city is via the O-7, and it will eventually be linked by two lines of the Istanbul Metro.

Sabiha Gökçen International, 45 kilometers (28 mi) southeast of the city center, on the Asian side, was opened in 2001 to relieve Atatürk. Dominated by low-cost carriers, Istanbul's second airport has rapidly become popular, especially since the opening of a new international terminal in 2009;[354] the airport handled 14.7 million passengers in 2012, a year after Airports Council International named it the world's fastest-growing airport.[355][356] Atatürk had also experienced rapid growth, as its 20.6 percent rise in passenger traffic between 2011 and 2012 was the highest among the world's top 30 airports.[357]

Istanbul Atatürk Airport, located 24 kilometers (15 mi) west of the city center, on the European side, near the Marmara Sea coast, was formerly the city's largest airport. After its closure to commercial flights in 2019, it was briefly used by cargo aircraft and the official state aircraft owned by the Turkish government, until the demolition of its runway began in 2020. It handled 61.3 million passengers in 2015, which made it the third-busiest airport in Europe and the 18th-busiest in the world in that year.[357]

• List of twin towns and sister cities of Istanbul

• List of people from Istanbul
• Outline of Istanbul
• 1766 Istanbul earthquake
• Caput Mundi
• List of cities with the most skyscrapers

• Website of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality
• Website of the Istanbul Governorship
• Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality: Interactive aerial photos from 1946, 1966, 1970, 1982, 2006, 2011 and 2013
• Old maps of Istanbul – Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The National Library of Israel – Historic Cities Research Project