For almost 16 centuries, Istanbul was the imperial capital of both the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, located in a geography in which people exhibited a great capacity to coexist and cooperate across religious and ethnic divides. With the rising nationalist trend spreading across the globe towards the end of the 19th century and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire, this peaceful co-existence came to a rather abrupt and violent end, leading to significant population shifts. As such Istanbul bears the deep traces of both a successful recognition of differences and equally so of their brutal rejection. Today however, after two decades of neo-liberal economic growth, Istanbul boasts on having reclaimed its cosmopolitan spirit by becoming a leading global and multicultural city. Yet these claims remain debatable given the ongoing anxious presence of not only the lingering non-Muslim population, but equally so of Istanbul’s more recent residents, such as the internally displaced Kurds. Over the past decade, the city has also been witnessing a steady increase in the arrival of undocumented migrants and refugees, while the question of how this migration and the ensuing ethno-cultural diversity are impacting the social landscape of Istanbul remains unanswered, both in Turkish urban and migration studies. Based on preliminary ethnographic research in Kumkapi, a historic Armenian quarter of Istanbul that is home today to a “super-diverse” (Vertovec, 2005) mix of Istanbul’s minority and migrant populations, this paper aims primarily to explore how this “new” diversity is being experienced and engaged with at the everyday level in the city. The choice of Kumkapi is purposeful as it embodies at once the uncertain predicament of different populations in Turkey, including Armenians, Kurds, Roma, as well as undocumented migrants and refugees from a great variety of countries, ranging from Georgia to Somalia. In this sense, the spatial concentration of migration and displacement histories/stories in Kumkapi, spanning across borders, ethnicities and religions, is immense. Given this historic and present particularity of Kumkapi, my paper also aims to capture the layered meanings and practices of living together in diversity in Istanbul, and more specifically within the cities’ socio-economically marginalized urban spaces, which are being increasingly impacted by global migration flows.