"It isn't easy being Syrian in Turkey", says Bayan, a 34-year-old who has been living in Istanbul for the past decade.

Ten years ago, she fled her native city of Aleppo, which was engulfed by war. When Bayan arrived in Turkey, her degree in architecture was not recognized so she worked for advertising agencies.

Then seven months ago she founded Yolo with her boyfriend.

The café is "among the few places in Istanbul to organize artistic, social and cultural activities in Arabic", she says.

Since the beginning of the war in Syria, Turkey has hosted nearly four million refugees. Officially, more than half a million of them are living in Istanbul.

"What drove us to open Yolo was the need to have a meeting place", says Bayan while drinking a cup of tea at one of the café's tables, while a song in Arabic is playing in the background.

Arabic cultural events

"Yolo provides the opportunity to find motivation. Coming here means breaking up a daily routine for refugees, who often only commute from home to work without having somewhere to meet, except for restaurants founded by refugees serving Middle Eastern cuisine", she explains.

Most of Yolo's consumers are in their 20s and 30s. They are not only Syrians -- there are also consumers from America and various European countries, as well as a few Istanbul locals.

Yolo is not only a café with tables where coffee and tea are served. The venue also hosts concerts with experimental and traditional music, karaoke, art laboratories and stand-up comedy performances in Arabic.

The two-storey building hosting the café is painted in intense orange, inside and outside -- a stark contrast to the neighboring buildings with more sober-colored facades and tea rooms for an elderly clientele, on a road situated in a conservative district on the riverbanks of the Golden Horn.

Hostility of the café's neighbors

Bayan says that she is proud of what the Yolo café has achieved in just a few months since it was opened. But she is also concerned over tensions between the café team and patrons, and its neighbors. "The difficult part is the relationship with Turks, our neighbors. It hasn't been easy since we opened and the situation is still complicated", says Bayan.

While Turkey was initially praised for welcoming millions of Syrians after war broke out in the neighboring country, anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiments in Turkey have been on the rise in recent years. The country has been in an economic crisis since the late 2010s, with many residents struggling to get by. This has led to growing resentment against refugees and migrants -- whom some Turks perceive to be an economic drain on the country or competition on the job market. While the inflation in Turkey has gone down in recent months, the annual rate is still over 50%.

Café-owner Bayan says that over the past few years many restaurants and stores run by Syrian refugees have been attacked by locals, including Yolo.

"We haven't only heard aggressive comments against us. Yolo has been attacked by neighbors at least three times, some people have been physically assaulted or threatened with knives, without a real reason", she recounts. "The attacks came after a few Turks heard someone talk in Arabic outside, maybe when they went out to smoke a cigarette."

She also says that neighbors have called the police to the café. She says that "[they were] claiming they were disturbed by the noise, but when the officers came they told us clearly that the attacks and the calls were simply due to the fact that we are Syrian."

'A meeting place for everybody'

"Our objective is to create an inclusive meeting place for everybody, regardless of ethnic, linguistic and religious differences and sexual orientation", stresses Majd, a Syrian-Moroccan engineering student who works for Yolo.

"We have to hide our identity when we walk in the street, if someone understands that you are Syrian, all hell breaks loose", the young man says bitterly.