The editors of the Interventions to Istanbul Studies series are proud to present these contributions, which together comprise the first round of what will be an ongoing conversation inspired by the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. While honoring the issues of systemic racism, oppression, and abuse of power that were and continue to be raised in the context of the BLM movement, we wanted to invite colleagues in the emerging intellectual field of Istanbul studies (and more broadly Byzantine, Ottoman, and Turkish studies) to engage broadly with its own legacies of various exclusionary and discriminatory practices/approaches. This can certainly mean thinking through the experience of Blackness and racial discrimination in Ottoman Istanbul and beyond, but the act of “thinking with BLM” within an Istanbul-studies milieu is, we argue, also much more, and holds even more transformative potential than that.