In this presentation, I want to shed light on the negotiation of “sensitivities” (hassasiyet) in the new landscapes of not only ethnically diverse, but also sexual and gendered mahalle spaces of today’s Istanbul. The neighbourhoods of Tophane and Kurtuluş, two mahalle which allegedly mirror the two ends of a moral axis, reflect the complexity of the current political transformations that have been shaping both Turkey as a whole and Istanbul in particular. With my analysis of neighbourhood-based battles over norms and values, I want to examine how the mounting level of polarizing public moral talk reverberates in the making of the two neighbourhood spaces, which I analyse. Instead of re-applying the Islamic-Secular dichotomy or the Muslim or gay binary (Puar 2007) as categories of analysis that obscure the multiplicity of conflicts and interests at stake, I want to contribute to the discussion on how to investigate moral antagonisms and cases of violence beyond established analytical frameworks.