This paper discusses rising tensions in Turkey through an analysis of heritage wars (between Islamists and secularists), urban renewal policies, and cultural performance. I begin with the symbolic and political-economic implications of Istanbul’s 2010 European Capital of Culture (ECOC) project. ECOC has spurred controversy over urban public space (and entitlement within that space), multiculturalism, and ethnic expression in the broader context of Turkey’s volatile EU trajectory. To analyze these tensions, I turn to recent fieldwork with arts executives and urban planners at the 2010 ECOC Agency, local NGOs, and cultural performers engaged in driving Istanbul to its “European” future. I also discuss the often-neglected significance of performative grassroots mobilization, particularly against the state gentrification of a historic, low-income, and ethnic (Roma) entertainment district: Sulukule. In the latter part of the paper, I turn to earlier ethnographic research on Istanbul’s nightlife to demonstrate how capitalist city redevelopment has become the stage for new class and gender distinctions with exclusionary consequences. Merging political anthropology with performance theory, my research also suggests how embodiment, or bodily intervention, as an alternative analytical frame, can provide fresh ethnographic insight on Turkish multiculturalism, Islamic-secular rifts, and everyday inequalities.