Their Faces Were Replaced Without Warning: Istanbul Residents Speak Out on Digital Image Duplication

The photograph had been taken at a neighbourhood iftar gathering in Fatih three years ago. The woman in it — a Syrian-born resident who has lived in Istanbul since 2015 — only discovered her image had been lifted, duplicated, and inserted into a commercial stock-photo collection when a friend recognised her face on a banner outside a shopping centre near Bağcılar. She had never signed a release form. Nobody had asked.

Duplicate image replacement — the practice of scraping, reprocessing, and redistributing photographs of identifiable individuals across digital platforms — has become a pressing concern in Istanbul's densely photographed public spaces. The issue has sharpened this summer as Turkish data-rights advocates say the volume of AI-assisted image duplication is outpacing the legal frameworks meant to contain it. For communities already navigating precarious legal status or public scrutiny, the stakes are unusually high.

A Problem With a Human Face in Beyoğlu and Beyond

Along İstiklal Caddesi, street photographers have documented Istanbul's daily life for decades, and their work has fed into global image libraries. But residents in Tarlabaşı and Dolapdere — two neighbourhoods with large Syrian and Kurdish communities — say they increasingly encounter their own faces in contexts they never agreed to. A community liaison working with the Göç Vakfı, a migration-focused civil society organisation based in Şişli, described receiving multiple complaints this spring from residents who found duplicated versions of their photographs used in advertisements, political campaign materials, and news aggregator thumbnails. The organisation has not publicly disclosed the number of cases, and the complaints have not been independently verified by this newspaper.

The issue is not limited to migrant communities. Esnaf — small shopkeepers — along Moda Caddesi in Kadıköy have reported similar experiences, with images of their storefronts and faces appearing on tourism platforms they had no relationship with. The Kadıköy Esnaf ve Sanatkârlar Odası, the district's tradespeople association, began fielding related inquiries in early 2026, according to publicly available meeting notes from a February assembly. No formal complaint mechanism exists at the municipal level specifically for image duplication.

Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law, known as KVKK and enacted in 2016, classifies photographs of identifiable individuals as personal data requiring explicit consent for processing. Penalties for violations can reach 1 million Turkish lira under the law's administrative fine schedule, though enforcement actions specifically targeting image duplication have been rare. The KVKK board published guidance on biometric and visual data in March 2024, but community advocates say awareness of those rules among small businesses and platform operators remains low. With the Turkish lira's purchasing power having declined sharply over the past three years, the financial deterrent of a maximum fine has also weakened considerably in real terms.

What Residents and Organisations Are Asking For

At a community information session held in late June at a cultural centre in Balat — the historic neighbourhood on the Golden Horn — attendees heard from a legal volunteer affiliated with the Istanbul Bar Association's pro-bono unit. The session drew roughly 40 people, according to an attendee who spoke to this reporter on background. Participants asked practical questions: how to submit a takedown request, whether a KVKK complaint requires a Turkish national ID number, and what evidence to gather before filing.

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's digital services directorate has not announced a specific programme addressing image duplication as of this publication date. CHP-affiliated council members have raised broader digital rights questions in committee settings this year, though no legislation targeted at duplicate image misuse has been tabled at the municipal assembly.

For now, the most immediate practical step available to affected residents is filing a complaint directly with the KVKK through its online portal, which accepts submissions in Turkish and requires documentation of where the duplicated image appears. The Göç Vakfı and several neighbourhood-level legal aid clinics in Gaziosmanpaşa and Sultangazi have offered to assist non-Turkish speakers with the paperwork. The next scheduled KVKK board meeting where pending complaints are reviewed is set for late July, according to the board's published calendar.