Almost 3 million people crowd İstiklal Avenue every day, and commercial rents have increased to eye-watering levels, making it almost impossible for small merchants to hold on to their shops. Beyoğlu’s mayor, Ahmet Misbah Demircan, was clear in his vision for the district when he recently described the street as one giant shopping centre.

“Beyoğlu used to be able to surprise me, one could establish real relationships with people here,” said Sevgi Ortaç, 31, an artist living in the area. “Now İstiklal could be a commercial street anywhere in the world, with the same brands and fast-food chains one finds in other big cities.”

But activists do not only blame gentrification for the rapid changes in Beyoğlu. Some argue that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, still has an axe to grind with a neighbourhood that made headlines in 2013 when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to oppose the planned demolition of Istanbul’s central Gezi park, just off İstiklal Avenue, to make way for an Ottoman-style shopping centre, a project pushed personally by Erdoğan, then the prime minister.

“Beyoğlu has seen oppressive occupiers [in 1918]. It has seen those who long for the old Turkey,” Erdoğan said at the opening of the renovated Beyoğlu municipality building this year in reference to his political opponents. “[Beyoğlu] has also seen the Gezi protesters. Beyoğlu will hopefully also be the place where we will start to build the new Turkey.”