Others appear to agree with your sentiment: https://www.reddit.com/r/istanbul/comments/10sia4d/rats_in_istanbul/ https://www.reddit.com/r/istanbul/comments/10si

Others appear to agree with your sentiment: https://www.reddit.com/r/istanbul/comments/10sia4d/rats_in_istanbul/ https://www.reddit.com/r/istanbul/comments/10sia4d/rats_in_i... I did some quick searches and nothing shows concretely that this is due to the high cat population, only anecdotally. Regardless, it's certainly a thing. https://turkeynomad.com/posts/why-cats-istanbul https://turkeynomad.com/posts/why-cats-istanbul