Models blow kisses backstage at the Red Beard show during MBFWI presented by American Express Fall/Winter 2014 on March 13, 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo by S. Alemdar/Getty Images for IMG)

A reflection on waste liquid shows a tourist walking near the Blue mosque at the Sultanahmet Square on the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Istanbul on April 13, 2021. (Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP Photo)

Shi'ite Muslim girls take part in a mourning procession to mark Ashura, the holiest day on the Shi'ite Muslim calendar, in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 16, 2024. (Photo by Dilara Senkaya/Reuters)

Police officers detain an activist to prevent her from marching in a pride parade, which was banned by local authorities, in central Istanbul, Turkey on June 26, 2022. (Photo by Umit Bektas/Reuters)

Artist Sayna Soleimanpour performs a photoshoot in protest against the mistreatment and alienation of Turkish women based on their clothing, during a two-day curfew amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on a deserted street in Istanbul, Turkey, early December 6, 2020. (Photo by Umit Bektas/Reuters)

People attend a wounded man after an explosion in Istikla Street in central Istanbul, Turkey on November 13, 2022. According to governor Ali Yerlikaya, an explosion that occurred at roughly 4.20 p.m. local time has resulted in losses and injuries. Emergency personnel were dispatched to the incident. (Photo by Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via Reuters)

Forrest Walker, “Police Walk”. Walker describes this shot, taken in 2015 at the last officially permitted Pride parade in Istanbul, as a tense and surreal experience. His focus is on a woman walking calmly in front of a line of riot police, her attitude part defiance and part performance. (Photo by Forrest Walker/All About Photo awards 2025 via The Guardian)

A woman visits St Savior in Chora church, known as Kariye in Turkish, in Istanbul, Friday, August 21, 2020. Turkey on Friday formally converted former Byzantine church, St Savior in Chora, into a mosque, a month after it similarly turned Istanbul's landmark Hagia Sophia into a Muslim house of prayer, drawing international rebuke. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)