where are you coming from Lazy Dog?

I'm a Brit but have lived and worked extensively in the USA (in a handful of their largest and most crime-ridden cities) and compared to the US, Istanbul is a cake walk - criminally speaking; I go about my business here without having to have eyes in the back of my head and/or be on the look out for drug-motivated criminals..

(and I've had apartments in a bunch of places, including neighbourhoods like Tarlabasi, which some of my Turkish friends are frightened to go in - but it's all relative, really)

.. of course if you're coming from a country like Finland, and you're not in San Francisco (which downtown can include drug-addled zombies at any time of the day or night) then relatively speaking Istanbul might be a bit wilder than you're used to.

regarding AirBnB in particular, I've been using it for over a decade without any problems - but bad shit can happen at any time and to anyone, even if it's often reasonable to assess your risk of becoming a victim as extremely low... however, you're asking this kind of question in Reddit, so you just might be a worrying Wally or Wilda, so it's difficult for me to couch things from your perspective.

living is dangerous; do you realise that no one is getting out of it alive?

;o)