ISTANBUL — Istanbul as an urban tableau of intrigue is well-worn literary and cultural terrain, traveled by Graham Greene and Ian Fleming and by more contemporary spy novelists such as Joseph Kanon and Alex Berenson.

The most recent James Bond film, “Skyfall,” had scenes of the debonair spy careening through Istanbul’s centuries-old Grand Bazaar on a motorcycle, and Mr. Kanon’s novel “Istanbul Passage” was set here during the waning days of World War II, when Turkey was neutral and Istanbul was a haven where secret agents of all allegiances could meet and conduct espionage in relative safety.

So perhaps, given the events that have been occupying Istanbul’s elite of late, Oscar Wilde was not only correct but also prescient when he wrote, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

With a corruption investigation involving officials including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; with the prime minister at every turn blaming the inquiry on the United States and Israel; with a feud between the prime minister and the followers of a reclusive preacher, Fethullah Gulen; there is clearly no shortage of conspiracy-minded intrigue that would make Mr. Wilde smile. Turkey’s own spy chief, Hakan Fidan, has been surreptitiously recorded while apparently discussing covert operations in Syria. Newspapers have published lists of thousands of Turks whose telephone conversations have been wiretapped. And when Turks want to have a private conversation, they sometimes leave their cellphones outside the room, worried that they can be used as recording devices by the national intelligence agency, known as M.I.T.