Their Homes Erased, Then Replaced: Istanbul Residents Speak Out on Duplicate Image Problem in Urban Records

A duplicate image problem in Istanbul's municipal property database has left hundreds of residents unable to complete official building assessments, real estate transactions, or earthquake-risk surveys, according to accounts gathered from community members across the city over the past two weeks. The issue centres on the İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi's digital records system, where identical photographs have been assigned to multiple distinct properties, making it impossible for officials or licensed surveyors to confirm which building is which without a physical site visit — a process that can take months in a city of 16 million.

The timing could hardly be worse. Since the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people across southern Turkey, the government has pushed an accelerated urban-transformation programme under the Kentsel Dönüşüm framework administered by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. Istanbul sits on the North Anatolian Fault, and official estimates have long placed the probability of a major Marmara earthquake above 60 percent within the next three decades. Residents who want to have their buildings assessed for seismic risk — a prerequisite for accessing state subsidies and relocation assistance — must first clear their property file in the municipal system. A duplicate image flags the record as unverified and freezes the process.

Fatih, Bağcılar, Kadıköy: The Same Story in Different Postcodes

In the Zeyrek neighbourhood of Fatih, a district dense with Ottoman-era timber houses that surveyors classify as high-risk, several property owners said they had been waiting since early 2025 for their records to be corrected. The local mukhtar's office in Zeyrek confirmed it had forwarded multiple written complaints to the Fatih Belediyesi property directorate, but residents said no correction had been issued as of the end of June 2026. In Bağcılar, one of the city's most densely populated western districts, a housing cooperative registered with TOKI — Turkey's public housing authority — said the duplication error had delayed the formal handover of 34 apartments originally scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2025. In Kadıköy on the Asian side, small landlords near Moda Caddesi described spending between 800 and 1,500 Turkish lira per visit on private surveying firms simply to generate the alternative documentation that municipal windows sometimes accept in lieu of a corrected digital record.

The Syrian refugee community concentrated in neighbourhoods like Bağcılar and Esenyurt faces particular difficulty. Aid organisations working in Esenyurt, including local branches of the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (SGDD-ASAM), have noted that tenants in the informal rental market rarely hold paperwork independent of the landlord's title record. When that record is frozen by a database error, the tenant has no administrative footprint at all — complicating access to municipal social-support schemes that require a verified address.

What the Data Shows, and What Residents Can Do

Turkey's Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change has not published a figure specific to Istanbul on the scale of the duplicate-image problem. The ministry's MAKS (Mekânsal Adres Kayıt Sistemi) spatial address registry, updated on a rolling basis, is the primary reference point, but inconsistencies between MAKS entries and the older TKGM land-registry photographs maintained by the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre are the root cause community members most frequently cite. An internal TKGM circular from March 2024 — referenced in a parliamentary question filed by a CHP deputy from Istanbul and published in the Grand National Assembly records — acknowledged a backlog of unresolved image-matching discrepancies across metropolitan municipalities, though no city-specific count was given in the published response.

Residents and tenants dealing with frozen files have a narrow practical path forward. The Kadıköy Belediyesi digital services desk at Söğütlüçeşme has been processing in-person correction requests on Tuesday and Thursday mornings since February 2026, according to a notice posted on the municipality's official website. Applicants need the original tapu (title deed), a recent utility bill, and two dated photographs of the building facade. For those in districts where local belediye desks are backlogged, the TKGM operates a dedicated complaints line — 182 — that can escalate files directly to the provincial cadastre directorate on Büyükdere Caddesi in Şişli. Lawyers specialising in property law in Istanbul note that the correction procedure, once formally initiated, carries a statutory 30-day response deadline under Article 11 of the Administrative Procedure Law — a deadline residents say is rarely met, but one that can anchor a formal appeal if it passes without action.