'My Grandfather's Face Was Erased': Istanbul Families Speak Out as Duplicate Image Removal Sweeps Digital Archives

Dozens of Istanbul residents have come forward in recent weeks to report that digitised photographs — many submitted to city-run cultural portals and neighbourhood archive projects — have been deleted or replaced by lower-quality duplicates after a batch automated de-duplication process ran across multiple databases this spring. The affected files include family portraits, neighbourhood documentation submitted by residents, and images catalogued under the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's ongoing urban memory initiative.

The issue surfaced publicly in late May when users of the Belgesel İstanbul portal, a publicly accessible archive maintained partly with municipal support, began posting on forums that photographs they had uploaded were either missing or had been substituted with visually similar but distinct images from other contributors. For families who submitted original photographs as part of heritage preservation drives in Balat, Fener, and Beyoğlu, the loss is not abstract.

One Balat resident, who described herself on a neighbourhood Facebook group as a third-generation Rum Orthodox community member, wrote that a scan of her grandmother's wedding photograph — taken in 1953 on Vodina Caddesi — had been replaced by a near-identical studio portrait belonging to a different family. She has not received a response from the archive administrators, she wrote, after three weeks of follow-up emails.

How the Deletion Process Works — and Where It Went Wrong

Digital de-duplication is a standard archival maintenance tool. Algorithms scan file libraries for images with matching or near-matching hash values and flag one version for deletion to save storage. The problem, archivists say, is that photographic archives require human review at every flag because visually similar images from different families, different eras, or different photographers are not the same object. Running an automated pass without that review layer is the technical equivalent of shredding half a filing cabinet because two folders had similar labels.

The Balat-Fener Cultural Heritage Association, a non-governmental group that has partnered with the municipality on several neighbourhood documentation drives since 2019, confirmed to The Daily Istanbul that it had flagged concerns about the de-duplication sweep to municipal contacts in June. The association said it was awaiting a formal written response. It declined to characterise the municipality's reply so far beyond describing communication as ongoing.

Eminönü and Karaköy residents who submitted photographs through the 2024 Tarihi Yarımada documentation campaign — which collected an estimated 4,200 resident-contributed images between September and December of that year — are among those now checking whether their submissions survived. The campaign was administered jointly by the municipality's cultural directorate and a consortium of local civil society organisations.

Residents Demand Backup Copies and Accountability

The practical demand from affected residents is straightforward: restore deleted originals from backup servers, and establish a transparent appeal process. Several people who described their experiences on the Şişhane-based community digital literacy forum Dijital Mahalle said they had never been told whether the portal retained original uploaded files separately from the processed archive copies. That ambiguity is central to the frustration.

A Fener resident who identified himself as a retired schoolteacher wrote that he had submitted 34 photographs documenting the neighbourhood's Greek-language Zografeion Lycée building on Vodina Caddesi taken between 1971 and 1989. After checking his account in June 2026, he found 11 images had been replaced or were returning broken links. He described the situation as an erasure of physical memory that no bureaucratic apology could repair.

For anyone who believes their uploaded images have been affected, the practical steps available right now are limited but worth taking: file a written complaint through the Belgesel İstanbul portal's contact form, retain any original scan files or negatives at home, and contact the Balat-Fener Cultural Heritage Association directly, which is compiling a register of affected submissions to present collectively to the municipality. The association can be reached through its office on Kürkçü Çeşme Sokak in Balat.

The municipality has not issued a public statement on the matter as of July 4, 2026. Whether the deletions are recoverable depends entirely on whether backup snapshots were retained before the de-duplication process ran — a technical question that archivists say should have been answered before any automated deletion was authorised.