Definitely recommend staying at Alec's place. The apartment is located in Moda (my personal favorite neighborhood in Istanbul) and there's a lot of coffee shops around where I love working. Alev is wonderful. She was friendly and thoughtful throughout the entire stay - always checking in on how I was doing and if everything was fine. She took care of me when I had a small incident, and helped a lot to resolve the situation. I'm planning to return to Alev's place after a short vacation.