I waited a long time with writing and posting this story. I did not want to worry my parents, brothers, family, girlfriend, friends, or readers. Now that I’m in another city, in another country, I feel that it’s the right time to share this. It’s an interesting story, exciting, entertaining, but also serves as a warning. These are not any of the reasons for me writing this however. Through my blog, I want to share my experiences of the intensity of life. Some moments are too private to describe, others are impossible to put into words, however, after this event occurred, I knew immediately I had an exciting story to share. Although the enthusiasm about what I had experienced soon changed into fear.
I was meeting an old Turkish friend in the party district of Taksim, or Beyoğlu to be more precise. We met on Istiklal Caddesi and it was fantastic to greet him in his country after us two having met in my country. We walked down to an alleyway where a few of his friends were getting drunk. The alley was a bit of a twilight zone, some very strange types there, but we soon finished our beers and headed to the club.
We had quite a few beers, talked the whole night and also met a few interesting people. As the club was closing we headed out, but decided it was too early to call it a night. We bought ourselves two beers and decided to chat some more while we finish our beers and then we’d go in our separate directions. We decided to look for a safe place to drink our beers. Drinking alcohol on the street is not allowed in Istanbul, as in Holland, so we wanted to get off the main street since you don’t want to mess with the Turkish police (and I’ll come back to this later). We walked around for 10 minutes, searching a spot that was out of sight enough to not be bothered by police, but in sight enough to be safe… We both had heard warnings about having to be careful in this area, so we took extra care. As we found our spot, my friend nodded towards a guy at the end of the street and joked “this guy could kill us”. We laughed and started chatting about music.
After about 10 minutes, two guys came by. My friend told me he’d be speaking in English and pretending not to know Turkish, since he figured that troublemakers looking for a fight were more likely to leave foreigners alone. I agreed. The guys asked for some money. I told them in Turkish I had none, threw out some more Turkish phrases in a playful way and after this they left. No trouble at all, but my friend was right about not speaking Turkish. There was a certain tensity.
About 10 minutes later another guy came. He spoke to us in Turkish and apparently asked if he could use on of our phones with his SIM card, because he needed to make a call. I’m not going to hand my phone over to anyone in the middle of the night, so I said in very broken Turkish that my phone’s in Holland, because in Turkey I can’t use it. He kinda stayed around like any socially awkward guy would in the middle of the night. I threw out some more Turkish phrases, he replied… It was fun. My friend told me he was impressed with my Turkish. I offered the guy a sip of my beer and everything was cool.
When we finished our beers we decided to get out of there and get back to Istiklal Caddesi, the main street in the district, always full with people – and police. As we indicated we were leaving the guy once more asked us for a phone for his SIM card… I told him again that I had no phone. My friend still pretended to not understand a word of Turkish. We started walking and indicated that we were going to Istiklal Cad. The guy then also started leaving. He said something in Turkish and when he wasn’t paying attention, my friend said that the guy was also going to the same street, which was just two streets away. The guy walked about 5 to 10 metres in front of us and my friend and I resumed our previous conversations, mostly about music and Istanbul.
We turned the corner, and another one. We were now looking at an L shaped corner. The guy in front of us walked to the corner and turned back and said something in Turkish. My friend said that the guy had said Istiklal Cad. was in the other direction. We turned and as I was talking, my friend wasn’t beside me as soon as I expected him to. Always an awkward moment when you think you’re talking to someone and they’re not there. I turned around and my friend was in the middle of the street with the guy holding him. I was wondering what was going on, but didn’t assume anything bad… The hold didn’t look so tight and I figured they were just messing around, after all, if you share your beer with someone, they’re your friend. All naive ideas, but retold it sounds a lot different than when it’s actually happening.
Next thing, the guy had my friend against the wall and I noticed the energy had shifted from jolly to something more serious. I walked around them to notice that the guy had a knife to the side of my friend’s head. I understood what was going on, but remained very calm. I had imagined before what it’s like to get robbed, but never thought it would be so casual. I contemplated for a second, to run and get help… To start shouting… The grab the guy by the wrist of the hand that was holding the knife with one hand and to punch him on his nose with the other… Instead I figured it was best to just stay right there and do nothing. I looked for loose stones or something that I could use as a weapon, but didn’t see anything. I was very surprised by how calm I was and how assertive. I took a step closer and said things like “hey man, you don’t want to do this”, “come on, stop it”, et cetera… Trying to find the reasonable guy in this obvious rookie.
My friend was noncooperative, so the guy put his hands in my friend’s pockets and fished out his phone. He then turned to me and while pointing his knife at me he said “telefon, telefon!” I looked him straight in the eyes and said “hayır, yok.” His eyes were nervous. He didn’t know what to do… it was obvious. He turned to my friend again… hesitated… and then he ran off. My friend and I caught our breaths… uttering “what the f….” And then suddenly… my friend started chasing the robber. I ran after him, but I was tired from the night out and my shoes were very loose, so I couldn’t keep up well. We ran through a few streets with people closing their bars and as my friend yelled out to stop the robber, nobody did anything. At some point we reached a crossing and just stood there… figuring out in which direction the guy had went. When you watch foot chases in Hollywood movies, you always get the moment where the good guys are chasing a bad guy and the reach a crossing, look around… 360 clockwise, 360 counterclockwise… and then curse because they know that they lost the guy. That’s exactly what it was like.
We weren’t finished however. I convinced my friend that we should go to the police station. People in Turkey have very little confidence in the police and so did my friend and so did I… but I also figured that even though there’s a small chance we’d find the robber and the phone… It was also a good chance for some closure.
A new adventure was about to start… Thieves are absolutely hated in Turkey and as I said earlier, you don’t want to mess with the police in Istanbul. Check back tomorrow for part 2!
Have you ever been robbed? How did it happen? Did you expect being robbed to be like actually getting robbed, or was it different?
Lesson learned here: if you’re in a big foreign city and get warned about certain things… Take it very seriously. Never think about it lightly!
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.
, what lamps do you prefer? The mosaic lamps there or the ones above? Though the ones on Amazon are true works of art, I prefer the more exotic ones.
