Talk:Istanbul

FA criteria

The article needs substantial work to meet the FA criteria: better referencing (including citing the uncited content, as well as improving the quality of refs so that promotional claims are cited to independent sources), updating many sections that are out of date. There is also massive overload of images in contrary to MOS:IMAGELOC. (t · c) buidhe 21:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

This article is semi-protected, and I have no intension editing such a page unprompted, so I give my oppinion here

I think an article should start with its formalities and links to other articles close to the subject.

I think the introduction should be:

Istanbul (/ˌɪstænˈbʊl/ IST-an-BUUL,[7][8] US also /ˈɪstænbʊl/ IST-an-buul; Turkish: İstanbul [isˈtanbuɫ] (About this soundlisten)), formerly known as Constantinople (previous capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Roman/Byzantine Empire and was originally Byzantium an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity, is the largest city in Turkey ...

because very important traces from very important past eras are available in the site (the past cities were not destroyed and there has been a continious development of it). The other eras are described in other articles and so these articles should be linked to immediatly this way.

After the formalities go on and put up history and other aspects of the city. The introduction should be cleaned from history things and put in a history section, becaus eof the subject it must be devided into subsections. The introduction after the first formalities should describe shortly the present city, that is an important commercial centre and large city of Turkey and Europe.

The article should describe the present city and the past eras should mainly be taken care of by links in the formalities and the history section (as they are supposed to be described there). However present day remains (sites, institutions and activeties) from the past history shsould be decribed in the article becauase they are turist attractions of the present and listed in subsections dependent on the era. As a turist I should be able to track the most important present sites dependent on my perspective in the present day city.

--Zzalpha (talk) 22:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I would like to remove the image of 'Colomn of Constantine', 'Statue of Atatürk in Büyükada' and 'Syrian nationals in districts of Istanbul' and 'Pera Museum in Beyoglu'. I find these ones least relevant to the article. Metuboy (talk) 12:01, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

It's clear that you are trying to make disinformation nationalism with adding "ancient greek.." bla bla thing. It's not allowed according to any Wikipedia policies. Look at the Gdansk article for some education. Old name of the city should be remove.

78.190.2.75 (talk) 18:51, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Article is too long

Currently at 12,639 words, needs to get below 10k. Bogazicili (talk) 20:46, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 March 2026

Is there a possibility of maling this page an Easter Egg in terms of the first line in thepage describing name, instead it saying Istanbul (Not Constantinople) is a… because that would be great! ~2026-13411-08 (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

 Not done Tbhotch^™ (CC BY-SA 4.0) 18:10, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

The first known name of the city is Lygos, not Byzantium

There is a discrepancy in the information provided between the two links:

Source 1: Lygos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Istanbul#Lygos Source 2: Byzantium - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul#Names Haky777 (talk) 19:51, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, the thing about "Lygos" is just that it's extremely marginal and sketchy. The sum total of what we know about it is exactly three words: "antea Lygos dictum" ("formerly called Lygos"). That's all Pliny writes about it. At what time it was supposedly called that, what kind of settlement it was at that time, who inhabited it, and to what extent it was really the "same" settlement as Byzantium, is all a matter of speculation. As is the question of how Pliny could possibly have known anything about it, writing as he did a full 700 years after it got called "Byzantium". So, adding that here would probably be "undue weight". Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:25, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Isn't Pliny’s statement "antea Lygos dictum" still a valid historical reference, even though it's brief? In Naturalis Historia, he generally compiled earlier Greek and Roman sources, many of which are now lost, so this likely reflects an existing tradition rather than speculation.

The uncertainty about what shape the city, settlement or village was in, when it was reffered to as "Lygos", is a separate discussion. That affects interpretation, not the existence of the reference itself.

The right approach would be to mention it with proper context and attribution, rather than leave it out entirely. Haky777 (talk) 05:27, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

We are already mentioning it, in the "history" section, where it can be contextualized better, and also in the separate Names of Istanbul article. But in the "names" section here, the sentence you objected to is still correct as it stands: "The first known name of the city is Byzantium". Because "Byzantium" is the first securely known name, and the first that is securely known to be of this city. Beyond that, there are very few reliable modern sources that have taken any notice of "Lygos" at all, and none I remember that explicitly claims that "Lygos" was an earlier name "of this city" (low-quality literature such as travel guides notwithstanding; those tend to combine that claim with all sorts of other baseless nonsense). Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:50, 28 March 2026 (UTC)