Numbers Instead of Names

In Istanbul, on the European side where the city stretches toward farmland and forest, lies Kimsesizler Mezarlığı—the Cemetery of the Companionless. Here, under identical concrete markers bearing only numbers, rest those whom society has forgotten or discarded.

No flowers adorn these graves. No weeping mourners visit. No names mark their passing.

How It Came to Be

The cemetery was established in 1962 as part of Istanbul's modernization efforts. As the ancient city transformed into a sprawling metropolis, officials faced the growing challenge of what to do with the unclaimed dead. The solution was this plot of land in Kilyos, nearly 40 kilometers from the city center—far enough to be forgotten, yet still within municipal boundaries.

For decades before, the unclaimed were buried in makeshift graves or common pits across various neighborhoods. The creation of Kimsesizler Mezarlığı centralized this process, bringing bureaucratic order to society's final abandonment. The cemetery grew steadily through the economic turbulence of the 1970s and the military coup of 1980, each political and social upheaval sending more of the marginalized to anonymous graves.

By the 1990s, as Istanbul's population exploded with migrants from rural Anatolia seeking opportunity, the cemetery expanded further. The refugee crises of the 2000s added another layer—those who died seeking sanctuary found only numbered concrete here, their dreams of a new life ending in anonymous burial.

Today, the cemetery houses over 30,000 individuals. Municipal workers still arrive with simple wooden coffins, still assign numbers instead of inscribing names, still maintain the spartan grounds with minimal resources.

Number 6782 was once a woman who sold her body on the streets of Karaköy. She had a name once—Aylin—and a village childhood filled with apricot trees and the call of sparrows. Now she is concrete and soil and a five-digit code in a municipal ledger.

Number 8219 died in winter, found frozen beneath a highway overpass. The heroin that finally stilled his heart was, ironically, the only companion that had remained faithful to him for years. Three decades earlier, he had been someone's beloved son.

Number 12376 jumped from the Bosphorus Bridge on a muggy August morning. Nobody claimed him. Perhaps nobody even noticed he was gone.

They arrive here in plain wooden coffins—the sex workers, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, the stateless refugees who perished crossing borders, the elderly who outlived anyone who might remember them.

The imam recites the funeral prayers hurriedly. The cemetery workers dig mechanical graves in the hard earth. No customary washing of the body by family members. No procession of mourners. No traditional meal shared afterward to celebrate a life completed.

Just numbers.

Yet each plot contains a universe—memories, dreams, loves, failures, moments of transcendent joy and crushing sorrow. Each held a heart that once beat with the same hopes as any other. Each pair of eyes once gazed upon Istanbul's minarets with the same wonder as the richest tourist.

Sometimes, rarely, strangers come. A university student researching her sociology thesis. A documentary filmmaker. A poet seeking metaphors for society's selective memory. They walk solemnly between the rows of identical markers, these visitors who never knew the dead but are attempting, even momentarily, to witness them.

In recent years, some local activists have begun holding memorial ceremonies at the cemetery, reading poetry and offering prayers for the nameless dead. These small gestures of remembrance push back against the institutional amnesia, insisting that a society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable—even after death.

Walking Among the Numberless

To walk the paths of Kimsesizler Mezarlığı is to feel your gut hollow out. The concrete markers stretch in every direction, identical and indifferent. Your footsteps crunch on gravel, the only sound besides wind and distant traffic. The truth is brutal here—we create hierarchies of human worth that follow us even into death.

You stop at marker 15423, just another slab among thousands. The concrete is already cracking at the edges. In ten years, maybe twenty, it will crumble entirely. You touch the rough surface, and dirt comes away on your fingertips. This is what remains of someone who once had morning breath, who scratched their itches, who felt their heart race during sex or fear or joy.

How did they die? Not peacefully in bed, surrounded by loved ones, that's for certain. Maybe alone in a piss-stained single room, found days later only when the smell alerted neighbors. Maybe in an emergency room, a "Jane Doe" with track marks and failing organs. Maybe huddled against a wall in winter, falling asleep and never waking. No one held their hand. No one wiped their brow. No one whispered "I love you" as they crossed over.

Their body was handled by strangers—efficient, gloved hands moving them from gurney to refrigerator to table to coffin. Their final dignity was a sheet over their nakedness, their last rites a perfunctory prayer from an imam who never knew their name.

You look at your phone. Three missed calls. Seven new messages. The contrast sickens you suddenly. These numbered dead had no one checking in, no one wondering where they were.

A question forms like bile in your throat: are your connections any more real than theirs were? Would the people who claim to love you still search for you if you became inconvenient, unstable, addicted, destitute? Or would they gradually let you slip away, relieved to be unburdened?

We tell ourselves comforting lies about community and belonging. Standing here makes those lies transparent. How many dinner parties have you attended where no one asked a single question about your inner life? How many family gatherings where conversation never ventured beyond weather and politics? How many lovers who never truly saw you?

A crow lands on a nearby marker, tilts its head at you, then takes flight. Even it doesn't linger here.

The brutal truth is we all die alone—rich or poor, loved or forgotten. Your final moments will be yours alone to experience, that last intake of breath a private act no matter who surrounds your bed. The only real difference is whether anyone remembers your name afterward.

And yet.

Near marker 22761, incongruously, lies a small bunch of wildflowers, already wilting. Someone came here, to this specific grave. Someone remembered this number, this human. Someone decided that this anonymous life deserved acknowledgment.

That small act of witness—isn't that the thing we're all desperate for? Not to be remembered eternally, but to be truly seen while we exist? To have someone recognize our particular pain, our specific joy, the unique constellation of thoughts and feelings that make us who we are?

You leave the cemetery with soil still under your fingernails. Istanbul pulses around you—vendors hawking simit, couples arguing on street corners, children chasing each other through crowded alleys, tourists photographing the same Hagia Sophia views that millions have captured before.

All of them believing they're the protagonists of their own stories, all of them one disaster away from becoming a number in this field of forgotten.

Tonight, you'll call your mother. You'll ask your partner about their childhood. You'll listen—really listen—to your friend's troubles. Not because these connections will save you from eventual solitude, but because they are the only true rebellion against the anonymity that waits for us all.

The Cemetery of the Companionless doesn't offer redemption. It offers something harder and more valuable: the unvarnished truth that we are, all of us, more fragile and more alone than we care to admit. And knowing this, maybe we can begin to truly see each other while we still have time.