Art, animals and the right to shelter in Istanbul

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

June 5 is World Environment Day, so this week we follow the city's four-legged, feathered and finned inhabitants, from a group exhibition that asks who really owns the urban space, to a cafe named after a Bosphorus diving bird, with stops at Istanbul Modern, Baruthane and the opening night of the music festival.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: Shelter … from us

Tugba Oztopcu’s “Calm.”  (Courtesy of Muze Gazhane)

The title of the exhibition carries just as much weight as the works displayed. "Bari-n/m-ak," with its fractured, hyphenated letters, simultaneously holds the Turkish words for "shelter" (barinak) and "to take shelter" (barinmak). Curated by Hicran Aksoz, the group show brings together 27 contemporary artists at Muze Gazhane, the former gasworks on the Asian side that IBB Kultur has been steadily converting into one of the city's more serious exhibition venues. The premise is animal rights, but the exhibition resists the temptation to become a rescue campaign with canvases attached. The question it actually poses is urban: Who gets to inhabit the city, under what conditions, and who decides?

Works range across painting, sculpture and mixed media. Baysan Yuksel's acrylic animals carry a strange, tender authority; Erkut Terliksiz places a fox beside its hunter in sheer irony; and Tugba Oztopcu's oils hold a stillness that feels almost liturgical.

The show has a social architecture as well as an aesthetic one. At its close, artists will offer works directly to collectors, with proceeds going straight to Besiktas Municipality shelters and Angels Farm's emergency supply list — art as logistics, for once, rather than merely as a gesture.

The missing letters in the title suggest homes waiting to be completed and the human obligation to complete them. Istanbul has around 4 million stray animals. The city can be both brutal and surprisingly tender to them. The question the exhibition presses is whether it knows how to be useful.

Location: P Salon, Cengelkoy Mah. Pasa Limani Cad. No:2, Uskudar

Date: Until Aug. 31

2. Word on the street: Karabatak

“Everything will be just great,” according to this patron. (Photo Karabatak website)

Istanbul has always named things honestly. Karabatak — the cormorant (that black, dive-bombing fixture of the Bosphorus)  — lends its name to one of Karakoy's most enduring coffeehouses, tucked inside a former metal workshop and spare-parts shop on Kara Ali Kaptan Sokak. Renovated in 2010 and open since June 2011, the two-story space has outlasted a dozen trendier neighbors with minimal fuss: good Julius Meinl coffee, an unpretentious room and the particular calm of a place that knows exactly what it is. The cormorant, it turns out, also flies as far as Twickenham, where a London branch recently landed. Ah, do not expect attentive service!

Location: Kemankes Mah. Kara Ali Kaptan Sok. No: 7/A-B, Karakoy

3. Istanbul diary

Kerem Uzel’s “Lifelong Slavery” at Istanbul Modern. (Courtesy of Istanbul Modern)

At Istanbul Modern, "Panorama: Dreams and Places" brings together 18 photographers working since the 2010s — abstract topographies, AI applications, moving images — in a show that refuses to be merely decorative about anxiety. Until Oct. 18.

Baruthane in Atakoy hosts "Women of the Republic Take the Stage,” presenting six pioneering women from Turkey, Germany and Austria who shaped science, architecture and the arts during the republic’s early years. Free. Until Nov. 29.

The 54th Istanbul Music Festival runs June 11-25 under the theme Here & Now. It opens at the Ataturk Cultural Center on June 11, with the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov and Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov in a program pairing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Twenty-two concerts, 14 venues and the Wiener Symphoniker are among the highlights. Purchase tickets at muzik.iksv.org.

4. Book of the Week: ‘The Island of Missing Trees’

For this week’s issue, Elif Shafak's "The Island of Missing Trees" sounds apt. Set between Cyprus in 1974 and London in the 2010s, the novel is narrated in part by a fig tree, logging the mass die-off of Cypriot fruit bats, the migration of Painted Lady butterflies and the slow violence of human conflict on the natural world. The fig tree's remark that it holds bats in high regard because they are essential to the ecosystem will either strike you as exactly right or mildly insufferable. On a personal note, I found myself simultaneously awed and envious of Shafak's ability to make the natural world sing on the page.

5. Istanbul gaze

Two fishermen at dusk, Kurbagalidere, Kadikoy. (Photo: Zeynep Erdim)

Zeynep Erdim — journalist, witty conversationalist, dependable friend — sees without flinching, whether she is looking at Jerusalem, Istanbul or her hometown of Izmir. Here, her tender but brutally honest lens is turned toward two lone fishermen perched on the rocks at Kurbagalidere as the sky turns pink over Kalamis Marina.

6. By the numbers

How do Turks feel about the environment? According to a MetroPOLL survey from January 2026, 64.1% of respondents describe themselves as worried about climate change, yet only 22.9% consider themselves well-informed on the subject.

• 91.4% believe the frequency of natural disasters — wildfires, floods, extreme drought — has increased in recent years.
• 63.2% cite water scarcity and drought as their single greatest environmental concern, well ahead of wildfires (13.1%) and food crises (9.9%).
• 63% rate the central government's performance on climate and environment as poor or very poor. Municipalities fare only marginally better, with 56.6% giving them a failing grade.