After being robbed we went on a manhunt with some bad ass Istanbul cops dressed in even more bad ass civilian clothes. The adrenaline started to subside and feelings and thoughts arose… The aftermath of a robbery, including what happens if you don’t learn your lesson the first time.
How I Got Robbed in Istanbul part 1.
How I Got Robbed in Istanbul part 2.
After making sure we’d keep in touch over the next few months, while I was living in Istanbul, we said goodbye. It was now morning and I got on the bus, full of people ready to go to work, or wherever people go at 7 in the morning on a Sunday (and it couldn’t have been church, because it’s Turkey). On my way home the events of the night kept going through my mind like a film. Even when I got to my bed, it was tough to fall asleep. My mind was noisy…
Could I have intervened? Why had I been so calm during the robbery? Did I put myself at risk by refusing to give the robber my stuff? I also felt a kind of compassion for the robber, which surprised me the most. When we were looking for the robber with the police, on one hand I hoped we’d find him, so that we could get my friend’s phone back and that justice would be done… However, I also knew that justice would not be done if we found him. He’d most likely get the living crap kicked out of him and with a few broken ribs and maybe a broken limb he’d be put together with hard criminals, murderers and rapists for a few months. That doesn’t seem like justice to me. So I sincerely hoped for the robber that we wouldn’t find him and that he might change his ways.
I started to feel like the guy needed help. I was unimpressed by him and he seemed like a total rookie, so maybe something could still be done. I believe that if the guy had felt that he had a choice, he wouldn’t be out robbing people. Imagine having to threaten people’s lives for a living; I don’t think this can make a human being happy. I have all the chances in the world. I’m more likely to be happy than the guy who robbed us, I’m more likely to achieve my dreams, to attain a certain level of spiritual development even… while this guy has no prospects at all. I felt very sorry for him, but at the same time I felt guilty for feeling sorry for him. I guess it was human and societal values colliding.
Over the next days I started getting a little scared. I realized that anyone can rob someone successfully quite easily. All you need is a knife and a quiet spot… and it only needs to be quiet for one minute, that’s all. I grew very wary and my previous feelings of sometimes being uncomfortable in certain situations in Turkey, which arose from culture shock, were now transformed into fear. I constantly kept my guard up during my time in Istanbul.
A week after the robbery, a friend of mine and I went to a club in the party district of the city again, Beyoğlu. It was a cool underground place, but they were charging 8 lira for the beers (EUR 4.- / $6.- more or less). So after trying to bargain, we decided to get some alcohol outside and drink it somewhere in the street. My friend suggested drinking it in some sidestreet, but I insisted that we’d drink it somewhere in a very busy area. We walked down to a big road where a lot of taxi’s were waiting for customers. Most of the taxidrivers wait outside their cars and talk to each other. We judged it as a safe place, even though the ghetto started just at the other side of the road.
After about 5 minutes, some dodgy looking guy came over and started talking to us in Turkish. I tried to tell him that I don’t speak Turkish and he should go away, but my friend insisted that it was fine and nothing would happen. Everything would be alright, as it always is with him and I’ve got to admit, this friend really knows how to deal with sketchy people. So apparently the dodgy guy spoke German, as did my friend, and they started conversing. We shared some vodka and some beer, but the whole time I was filled with adrenaline and extremely on guard… my body even shaking.
At some point I was talking in English to my friend and I noticed the guy tapping his finger on my friend’s pocket… I immediately told my friend, since I assumed the guy would try to pickpocket him. Some taxidriver joined the conversation and another guy. I figured we were safe from getting robbed, but we should still be completely on our guard… I couldn’t enjoy the alcohol anymore and wanted to go back into the club.
We tried to have some fun with the guys and we even ended up taking a picture with them.
The dodgy guy on the left, my friend in the middle and a friendly guy on the right (sunglasses came from us). The guy on the right actually showed me pictures of his children which he carried around and really wanted to share to show me who he is and what’s important to him. Or possibly because he didn’t speak English and I didn’t really speak Turkish, so it was just the easy way out.
At some point this guy left and an acquaintance of the dodgy guy came by. They said hi and the guy joined the conversation. It was now him, a friendly taxi driver (who seemed a bit wary about the guys we were speaking to), the dodgy guy, my friend and I, in a street with plenty of people around and a lot of passers-by. I really wanted to go back in and was just waiting for my friend to finish his conversation… At some point I heard my friend saying “hey hey hey!” in a strict tone and saw the guy passing a phone to his acquaintance who was standing behind him, but right in front of me. I got up with a new rush of adrenaline in my body.
The urgent tone in my friend’s voice might have scared the guy and he got the phone back from his acquaintance and passed it back to my friend. The taxidriver had disappeared. My friend told the guy in German that he would be very friendly, but he should not try to play tricks like that on him. He was very strict on him and the guy (more or less sincerely apologized). Then immediately police showed up and asked me if there was any problem. I told them to ask my friend if there’s any problems. My friend said there are no problems at all, but the cops still asked the dodgy guy for his ID and they stuck it in their pocket after giving it a glance. Guess he would have to report to the police station to get it back. Then I saw the taxidriver again. I think he had warned the police immediately. Very friendly.
The police told us to get our beer and get out of there, so we did. 10 meters down the street two angry men approached me and told me to throw away my beer… I hesitated, but they showed their ID’s and were cops in civilian clothes. Wow, so much police presence, yet so much crime.
So this had been the second time I was out drinking on the street in that area and both times someone had tried to rob a friend of me… Once successfully, once not. This made me even more pessimistic about the safety in Istanbul. The city’s safe if you play by its rules… but I’ve never been the type of person to follow the exact rules.
The next months I felt caged… I didn’t feel free at all, scared to write too critically about the Turkish government and getting my site blocked or getting charged for “anti-Turkishness” (a law once useful perhaps, but now often applied in fascist ways by corrupt politicians and judges), but also scared to be alone on the streets at night. It was the final push I needed to fall into a culture shock that would last for about two months.
Towards the end of my stay I really started to enjoy myself again and feel alright, but it was too late.
The good part however: I learned how to deal with culture shock, I got some life experience and I learned to be a little bit more careful at night.
This was the final part of the three piece series. Thanks for following.
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
