İstanbul has always been a city in motion. Long before its bridges connected continents, the city was already bridging cultures, languages, and ways of building. My research into migration’s impact on İstanbul’s architectural heritage began as an academic pursuit but quickly became something far more personal.

Why Migration?

When we think about the city’s built environment, we often focus on the monumental — the mosques, palaces, and grand boulevards. But the most honest architecture of a city is written in its neighborhoods. In Balat, Tarlabaşı, Bağcılar — you can read migration in the walls themselves.

Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Anatolian, Kurdish, Syrian — each wave of arrivals left a layer. Buildings were repurposed. Streets were renamed. A church became a mosque, then a community center. A Greek school became a Bulgarian school, then an apartment block.

The Research Question

My MSc thesis at Özyeğin University asks: how does forced and voluntary migration alter not just who inhabits a space, but what the space becomes?

This isn’t purely a historical question. İstanbul is presently one of the largest host cities for Syrian refugees — over half a million registered in the city alone. New neighborhoods are forming. Old ones are transforming. The architectural implications are enormous and underexplored.

What Inclusive Urban Design Looks Like

Architecture has a habit of designing for people rather than with them. Inclusive urban design — the kind that accounts for temporary residents, linguistic minorities, and communities in transition — looks different.

It means:

  • Mixed-use spaces that serve both established and newcomer communities
  • Buildings that can adapt in function without full demolition
  • Public spaces that don’t require cultural fluency to feel welcome

These aren’t radical ideas. They’re, in many ways, how İstanbul’s historic fabric already worked — organically, over centuries. The challenge is to learn from that organicism deliberately rather than accidentally.

Looking Ahead

I’m in the final stages of my thesis and beginning to think about what comes after: practice. The gap between academic insight and built reality is real and wide. But I believe that research embedded in built work — or built work informed by research — is where architecture becomes most powerful.

If you’re working at the intersection of migration, urbanism, and design and want to talk, reach out. I’d love to connect.