My trip to Istanbul was a totally enjoyable experience. Naturally, Istanbul is an unbelievably interesting city with incredible history and endless variety, but it is also very complicated in plan, addresses, transport, languages etc. Smoothness of vacation process was due to Selim. He is a wonderful, easy to talk to person, who is also a responsible host. He was almost instantly reachable by phone or text, fast thinking and full of support like a real friend he became. He did a lot for us (in my case it was Airport pickup and dropoff he volunteered due to my extremely early planes), that was not in contract and did it as friend would.
I rented his apartment off the Istiklal street, which is something like a New York's Times Square with East Village and some Soho places all together, working 24/7. I think that if in doubt on security and comfort in foreign country, place like his is perfect. Its one block off the Istiklal and high enough above it, so natural noise of ever-living street is well dampened, and yet you are always surrounded by people, you want to seat next to in Istiklal endless cafes and restaurants and not the type you want to avoid :).
His place is a brand new (fully renovated) apartment in old (European part of Istanbul is mostly old buildings) building that has anything you may need (pretty much like home, really) with amazing Turkish cotton bedding and lots of fresh air (breeze from sea reaches it) and large TV (didn't have time to watch it though).
Thanks, Selim from me and my wife!