The name Arnavutkoy means ‘Albanian village’ in Turkish. As the story goes, in 1468, Sultan Mehmed II (who led multiple campaigns against the Albanians and their military leader, Skanderbeg) recruited craftsmen from Albania to pave Constantinople’s streets. Other sources attribute the migration of Albanian families to a scheme that sought to replenish the city’s population after Mehmed II (AKA ‘Mehmed the Conqueror’) brought Istanbul under Turkish control in 1453. Albanians settled joining the area’s historic Greek community. And so it became known as the Albanian Quarter.