In the year 2010 the city of Istanbul had been awarded the title of European Capital of Culture. The award is challenged in this publication. Besides European, Asiatic, Oriental and Cosmopolitan traits are characteristic for Istanbul: the remnants of the Christian-European Byzantine past, the Turkish language of the inhabitants and their Central Asian origin, Islam as the dominating Oriental religion and cosmopolitanism, the influence of westernization. In the scientific field the question has been raised, if Istanbul is a World City. In the course of its very long history Istanbul has attained three times the status of World City: as the political, economic and cultural capital of the Byzantine Empire, as the political, economic and cultural capital of the Ottoman Empire and - through the impact of the new Turkish economic policy since the 1980s - as the economic and cultural, but not political capital of Turkey with global connections. Istanbul's identity is today marked as a crossroads World City on the level of developed industrial society.