Istanbul's Fight Against Duplicate Street Art: How the City Compares to Rome, Barcelona and Beyond

Istanbul's municipality has ramped up enforcement against duplicate image replacement — the practice of painting over original street murals with near-identical copies, often by commercial operators seeking cheaper licensing workarounds — targeting at least a dozen sites across Beyoğlu and Karaköy since the start of 2026. The crackdown follows complaints from local artists and heritage groups that original works on public walls are being systematically cloned, sometimes within days of completion, stripping creators of attribution and income.

The issue has sharpened in Istanbul for a specific reason: tourism. The city received roughly 20 million foreign visitors in 2024, and Instagram-friendly murals in Balat, Kadıköy and along Istiklal Avenue have become economic assets in their own right. Where there is footfall, there is incentive to replicate. Café owners and boutique hotel operators have been accused — though not yet charged — of commissioning lookalike versions of popular works at a fraction of the going rate, then presenting them as originals to guests. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's cultural affairs directorate confirmed in a written statement published on its official website in March 2026 that an audit of public art registration had been launched, though it did not specify how many cases were under review.

What Istanbul Is Actually Doing

The municipality's primary tool is its Public Art Registry, a database of georeferenced murals launched under Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu's administration in late 2024. Works registered with the scheme carry a QR code linking to the original artist's credentials. In Karaköy, near the Kemeraltı Mosque, roughly 40 murals have been tagged under the scheme so far. In Kadıköy's Moda district, the Kadıköy Arts Cooperative — a non-profit founded in 2019 — has independently catalogued more than 130 street works and cross-references them against the municipal database when disputes arise.

Enforcement, however, remains slow. Under Turkish intellectual property law, article 71 of Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works provides criminal penalties for reproduction without consent, but prosecuting a wall painting as a reproduction requires the original artist to file a formal complaint, gather photographic evidence and navigate a civil court process that routinely takes 18 months or longer. Three artists interviewed by The Daily Istanbul — none of whom wished to be named for fear of damaging commercial relationships — described the system as functional in theory and exhausting in practice.

How Istanbul Stacks Up Globally

Rome offers an instructive comparison. The Municipio I council introduced a Street Art Protection Protocol in 2022 covering the Ostiense and Pigneto neighbourhoods, embedding digital watermarks into approved murals using ultraviolet-reactive paint. The scheme, funded partly through an EU cultural heritage grant, means duplication is detectable under inspection lighting. Istanbul has no equivalent UV-marking programme yet, though the Kadıköy Arts Cooperative has reportedly approached a German supplier about costs.

Barcelona went further. The city's Institut de Cultura introduced mandatory artist contracts for any mural painted on municipally owned surfaces from January 2023, giving creators legally enforceable rights over reproductions within 500 metres of the original site. Istanbul's registry scheme lacks that contractual backbone — participation is voluntary, and the municipality has no power to compel a building owner to remove a duplicate if the wall is private property.

Where Istanbul does perform well compared to peers is in speed of registration. London's equivalent scheme, run through the Southwark council for the Bermondsey and Peckham areas, had logged around 90 works in its first year; Istanbul's registry hit 200 entries within eight months of launch, according to figures published by the municipality in February 2026.

For artists working in Balat or along the Boğazkesen Caddesi corridor in Beyoğlu, the practical advice right now is straightforward: register with both the municipal database and the Kadıköy Arts Cooperative's independent catalogue, photograph the work with a timestamped camera before it dries, and file the registration number with a notary. It costs roughly 150 Turkish lira to notarise a timestamped image — an accessible safeguard while the legal framework catches up with the streets.