Istanbul's Duplicate Photo Problem Is Costing Residents Money and Trust

Walk into any of the dozens of real estate offices lining Bağcılar's main commercial strip or scroll through the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's online building permit portal, and the same problem surfaces within minutes: the same photograph appearing twice, three times, sometimes a dozen times under different property addresses, different owners, different prices. It is not a glitch anyone has officially named, but urban data specialists in Istanbul have a shorthand for it — duplicate image pollution — and its effects are spreading beyond the digital realm into people's wallets and legal standing.

The timing matters. Istanbul is in the middle of an aggressive urban renewal drive accelerated after the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, which killed more than 50,000 people across Türkiye and sharpened public attention on building safety records in the country's largest city. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, controlled by CHP mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been pushing a digitisation agenda for building inspection data. But that push has surfaced a structural flaw: municipal photograph archives, many of them scanned from paper records in the early 2010s, contain thousands of image duplicates that now attach incorrect visual documentation to the wrong buildings, wrong streets, even the wrong districts.

What Residents Are Actually Losing

The consequences are tangible. In Zeytinburnu, a district flagged for accelerated earthquake-risk demolition under the 2012 Urban Transformation Law, homeowners appealing risk assessments have found that the official photographic record attached to their apartment block sometimes shows a structurally distinct building in a different neighbourhood entirely. Legal challenges based on these mismatches have added months to already slow bureaucratic processes, according to filings reviewed by The Daily Istanbul at the Zeytinburnu district court registry.

On the private market, the problem compounds. Emlakjet and Sahibinden — the two dominant Turkish property listing platforms — both rely partly on user-uploaded photographs, and neither currently runs automated duplicate-detection against municipal image databases. A survey of listings in the Fatih and Esenyurt districts conducted by a Istanbul Technical University research unit in the first quarter of 2026 found that roughly 14 percent of active residential listings contained at least one photograph that also appeared on a separate, distinct listing — sometimes for a property priced 300,000 Turkish lira lower. At current exchange rates, that is a gap worth approximately 7,500 euros. Buyers acting on the misleading images have grounds for complaint but face a consumer protection system that moves slowly; the average civil court resolution for property misrepresentation cases in Istanbul ran to 18 months in 2025, based on justice ministry statistics cited in parliament that year.

Sirkeci-based civic technology non-profit Kent Veri Derneği has been documenting the issue since late 2024. The organisation has mapped duplicate image clusters across the municipality's publicly accessible ArcGIS layers covering Beyoğlu, Bakırköy and Pendik. Its preliminary findings, published on its own website in May 2026, identified over 4,200 confirmed duplicate image instances across those three districts alone.

What Can Residents Do Right Now

Practical options exist, even if systemic fixes are months or years away. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's BIMTAS subsidiary, which manages city geographic information systems, accepts formal image-correction requests through its online portal at bimtas.istanbul — the process requires the applicant to submit the building's Uavt address code alongside alternative photographic evidence such as a notarised exterior photograph dated within the last 12 months. Correction requests submitted this way carry a legal timestamp that can be used in subsequent administrative appeals.

For renters and buyers, the most reliable cross-check remains old-fashioned: comparing any listing photograph against Google Street View imagery of the stated address, then verifying the building's earthquake-risk status through the e-Devlet gateway using the property's title deed number. Both checks take under ten minutes and have no cost. The Turkish Consumer Protection Association — Tüketici Derneği — operates a free advisory line at its Şişli branch, on Halaskargazi Caddesi, specifically for property documentation disputes. Given the pace of urban transformation contracts being signed across western Istanbul this summer, residents waiting for the system to fix itself may find the wait expensive.