The Silent Citizens of Istanbul
- Emiliano Castillo Amozurrutia
- 1 dic 2025
- 8 Min. de lectura
Actualizado: hace 3 horas
A journey through coffee shops, campuses, clinics, and shelters to understand the city’s unique bond with its felines
White, black, gray, brown, solid-colored or patchy; friendly or aloof; skinny, fat, big, small, fluffy, bald, tailed or tailless: cats in Istanbul come in every imaginable form. Few cities have served as the capital of so many civilizations: Roman, Byzantine, Latin, Ottoman, Turkish—and, in a sense, feline. Here, cats are not pets; they are citizens. They have food waiting for them in neighborhoods, improvised shelters, and even statues. In a city that has changed its name, its empires, and its religions, they seem to remain the only constant.
The exact number is hard to confirm. While the Istanbul Chamber of Veterinary Surgeons claims there are more than 700,000 cats, other estimates push the figure toward a million or more. There is no public municipal census to verify this, but a few minutes of walking around the city are enough to understand the scale of the phenomenon: the city belongs to cats as much as to humans.
A City shared by humans and cats
At Baum Makarnist, a coffee shop in the heart of Şişli, humans and felines enjoy lunch side by side. Chai, salads, and pasta are served just a few centimeters away from bowls filled with cat food. Emel, the cook, pauses her work three times a day to feed the 15 to 20 cats that inhabit the area. “That’s why there are so many around here”, she explains as three cats—who had been napping a few meters away—approach the moment they see her. They know it’s lunchtime. Adem, owner of the coffee shop, tells me about Kasper, a slate-gray cat with black stripes and raw-green eyes who rubs against him in the middle of our conversation, seeking affection. “He’s the most constant one. He first came four years ago, and since then he sleeps, breakfasts, eats, and dines here. He’s a noble, affectionate cat”. They are far from being the only ones feeding cats—quite the opposite. On Yaşar Doğu Sokak, a random street in this feline capital, neighbors and shopkeepers care for them as if they were a collective responsibility.
A stroll through Nişantaşı makes it unmistakable: they yawn shamelessly, stretch, ask for food and attention. They are content animals. They sleep, walk, observe life pass by, and sleep again; that is the way they exist. They roam the streets with the calm of those who feel at home. Damla, a 25-year-old master’s student walking through the area, recalls a Turkish saying: “Before you move into a new place, look at the behavior and health of the cats and dogs in the neighborhood. If the animals aren’t afraid of people, it means they’re treated well. It’s a good place to live.”
The relationship between Istanbul’s cats and its people is intimate. Emre, an older man with a disheveled appearance—his long yellowed beard, clothes faded into colors only years of wear could produce, and a face shaped by a hard life—sits in a corner of Cihangir reading a book on civics and religion. Around him, five or six cats keep him company. None of them seem concerned. They are part of the natural landscape of this city shared by humans and felines. “For me, cats mean love. This love in Istanbul is both religious and compassionate. To many people, they are like children,” Emre says. Beside him, the youngest—a curious kitten—plays with his clothing. Emre responds with a patience that borders on paternal.
Kadıköy is one of Istanbul’s most iconic districts—an alternative, cutting-edge neighborhood known for its vibrant cultural life, its coffee shops, murals, bookshops, bars, galleries, antique stores, and, of course, its cats. In Kadıköy, it is common to find people like Celine, a young woman feeding the eight cats gathered around her. “I know most of them. I kind of give them nicknames,” she says. Celine feeds the neighborhood’s cats whenever she can. In her view, “They’re just helpless animals. They rely on us. If we don’t feed them, how will they eat?”
She explains that neighbors often organize collectively to care for the street cats. “In my building’s group chat, we coordinate to take care of all the cats around the block.” Before moving to Istanbul, Celine was afraid of cats, but after months in the city—especially after interacting with a cat that lived in her office—her feelings changed completely. Feeding street cats is now part of her routine, and she is even considering adopting one soon.
Perfect places to understand the sense of responsibility Istanbul has over their cats are universities. At Istanbul University’s historic Beyazıt campus, more than 35 cats live among the courtyards, gardens, and faculty buildings. They are cared for by the student-run cat care club, led by Berk, 23 years old student of Russian language and literature who plays a key part as a caregiver for the city’s most iconic residents. Every day he walks around the university with a cart full of food and water for his furry friends, which he distributes at various pre-established feeding points. As he walks around campus, many students come close to him to help him with his task.
“Our club runs entirely on volunteers”, Berk explains. “We divide everything—feeding schedules, medical treatments, donation management, social media—because the cats depend on us every day”. The club collaborates closely with the municipality, which provides free vaccinations and basic veterinary services. “At this point, they know us well”, he adds. “They’re kind to us because they know we treat the cats seriously. Most of the cats on campus are vaccinated and sterilized”. Not all of them, though. The younger or feral ones are harder to catch, and that complicates the work. “Sometimes they’re scared, so taking them to the vet becomes almost impossible”, the student admits. Health is the club’s biggest challenge—treatments are expensive, and the group survives solely on student donations.
Despite the difficulties, the campus cats coexist peacefully. “They don’t really fight,” Berk notes. “They’re used to being here. Istanbul has taken care of cats for centuries—this goes all the way back to Ottoman times. We’ve kept that tradition”.
For Berk, caring for them is not just cultural, but it’s also deeply emotional. “When I’m having a bad day, just seeing or petting a random cat changes everything,” he says. “They relax me. They take away the bad energy. They give Istanbul a break from it. They’re like our safe space”.
Near Fatih, Nisa—22 years old, a dentistry student who has lived in Istanbul for three years—feeds a small family of cats with the quiet precision of someone for whom care comes naturally. She pulls a bag of kibble from her backpack and pours it onto the pavement. “I feed them whenever I can”, she says. “Not regularly, it’s more like little gifts. When I have time, I buy food they like and bring it to them”.
Nisa lives in one of Istanbul’s largest student dormitories—“almost 700 people”, she notes. There, a volunteer group manages the cats and dogs that wander through the campus. They coordinate through a group chat, respond to reports of injured or sick animals, and work closely with street-animal health centers. “Usually they ask for help from students”, she explains. “For example, to catch a sick cat. Cats in Istanbul are generally friendly, so it’s not difficult”.
When the volunteer “cat team” has enough donations, the animals are taken to private veterinarians; when funds run low, they rely on municipal shelters. Still, Nisa insists that most street cats thrive thanks to the sheer scale of Istanbul itself. “There are so many people here, and most of them like cats. Even if only a fraction of the city helps, it’s enough. There’s actually more food in the streets than they need”.
She points to a nearby cat’s ear. “In Istanbul, you can tell if a cat is sterilized by its ear”, she adds. “If it has a small triangular cut, it means it’s been through surgery”.
Illness, injury, and the limits of care
Fırat is 41 years old, fourteen as a veterinarian in Istanbul. Stocky, with tattoos of cats and dogs covering his broad arms, he speaks with a rough voice that contrasts with his kind gaze. His clinic in Şişli, Vet Team, receives a constant flow of patients. Some of them are owned, many of them are not.
“The most common problems we see in stray cats are respiratory diseases”, he explains. “Herpesvirus, calicivirus—things that spread very easily in a city with so many animals living close together.” Sneezing, nasal discharge, eye infections, and chronic irritation are routine cases. Parasites are equally widespread: worms, fleas, mites. Skin diseases such as ringworm, and malnutrition are also everyday realities.
“It’s very difficult to completely eliminate disease in a place this crowded with cats”, he says. “They multiply so easily”.
Accidents are another major issue. “We get a lot of cats hit by cars,” he says. “And many fall from high places”. Trauma cases fluctuate with the seasons. “In winter, there are fewer accidents—cats stay hidden, out of the cold—but viral and bacterial infections increase.”
Treating stray cats, Fırat insists, is always harder than treating pets. “Most of the time, when someone brings in a stray, it’s already very sick—so sick that a random passerby noticed something was wrong. By then, sometimes it’s too late”. With house cats, by contrast, owners can react quickly: “If your cat hasn’t eaten in two days, you bring him in. Stray cats don’t have that chance”.
Another difficulty is financial. “Clinics like mine don’t receive any support from the government”, he says. “Medicines cost money. Equipment costs money”. When a stray arrives, they offer discounts, but free treatment is impossible. “And what happens often is that someone brings in a stray in critical condition, leaves it with us, and never pays. It’s complicated”.
Vaccination follows a similar pattern. The government provides rabies vaccines for all stray cats because the disease is dangerous to humans. That means the overwhelming majority of Istanbul’s street cats are protected against rabies. “But for all the other vaccines—Fırat says—the numbers are not good. They rely almost entirely on private clinics and private citizens”.
Sterilization is a shared effort between municipalities and volunteers, but limited resources make progress slow. There is no official data, but Fırat estimates that around 60 percent of Istanbul’s cats are sterilized—an impressive number, yet not enough to control population growth. Public sterilization and vaccination take place in government shelters, “but they don’t have the budget they need to operate properly,” he adds.
Inside the shelters
Berat (fake name) runs a small veterinary clinic in Kadıköy, but not long ago—quite recently, in fact—he spent more than five years working at the Beykoz shelter, a government-funded facility for stray animals on the outskirts of the city.
“Life there is not dignified”, he tells me. “Sick and aggressive animals are forced to live together because the space is limited and the staff is too small. After a while, the workers, trying to protect themselves, end up doing less because there are just too many animals. Animal behavior is directly tied to animal welfare. The resources are nowhere near enough to care for so many lives, and very often the people running those places don’t care if the animals die”.
As he speaks, he shows me distressing videos and photographs from the shelter that reveal the poor quality of care the animals receive. In some of the images, dozens of dead animals lie on the ground; in many others, animals appear severely mistreated or ill, living in degrading conditions. Berat explains that, sadly, this is common, and that the proper functioning of such centers depends entirely on a budget that is, in most cases, insufficient—as well as on management teams that are not always truly committed.
Despite this, he stresses that most cats in Istanbul live well thanks to the people who care for them. It is the citizens who feed them and who, when they see an animal in poor condition, step in to help—even paying for their treatments out of their own pockets. These are treatments that his clinic in Kadıköy, Kadıköy Rıhtım 7/24, offers as cheaply as logistics allow.
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