In the aftermath of WWI, Russian Civil War refugees in Istanbul became one of the first big social groups that experienced a transformation of the notion of refugeedom. From being people in an unfortunate situation who fled from violence, looked for a safe place and relied on the humanity of their unwilling hosts, Russian refugees had been transformed to a degrading social category, an obstructive factor in politics and economy, an undesirable element whose movement should be controlled, who should be detained in camps, and who was expected to silently follow their fate designed for them by their “patrons.” Fleeing from one disfavor they found themselves unwelcome intruders on the other side of the border. In the perception of the governors of occupied Istanbul, those Russians merged with other undesirable people who were kept in detention and concentration camps throughout the colonial world from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century and during the WWI. In many cases, Russian refugees in the Istanbul area were treated in a similar way. To a certain degree, post-WWI Istanbul became one big temporary detention camp for Russian refugees until a territory for their disposal would be found. Furthermore, instead of relying on traditional charitable state institutions or private philanthropic organizations, Russian refugees found themselves subjects to institutionalized bureaucratic machinery of “scientific” humanitarianism and supranational refugee regimes. Economic devastation, political instability, and the scope of the refugee problem in the region forced the Allied representatives and the Ottoman governments in the city to evade any responsibility for the Russian refugees and to transfer it to an international body of any kind. As a result, the Russian community in Istanbul was fragmented, its people were categorized and ranked according to deserving help priority-levels by the institutions distributing humanitarian aid. This policy changed those people’s subjectivity, identity, and bodily integrity, eventually turning them into modern refugees. Studying the experience of Russian refugees in the Istanbul area allows us to identify initial patterns of refugee treatment in the Middle East and the world, which led to current international refugee politics. It also explains the public notion of refugees, which we routinely accept today as a norm. Additionally, the case of Russian refugees adds to our understanding of Turkish state relations to religious and ethnic Others covered by the romanticized and nostalgic image of the White Russians in Istanbul.