Getting Robbed in Istanbul

Last night I got robbed. Or scammed? Fell victim to extortion? I’m not sure what the proper term is.

It’s not a big deal, and it’s a similar story to what has happened to a lot of other travelers. I was in Taksim Square, a huge tourist attraction, and I met a super friendly dude walking down the street who invited me to a local bar.

I figured sure, I’m in Istanbul, the city’s amazing, let’s try new things. So I follow him to a bar, which turns out to be a club underground, with eastern European girls dancing and a few guys mingling with them. The club is long and rectangular, with tables lining the edges of the room, a bar at the far end, as well as a bouncer watching the door.

We sit down at a table near the door, and I ask him how much the drinks are in this place. He says

“40 lira.” ($12).

“Whoa, I’m a poor backpacker, dude. That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s no big deal, because we can share one drink,” he responds with a smile.

Alright, whatever. I’ll drop 20 lira for a good conversation with a local and a chance to try a new beverage. We order a drink, this special traditional Turkish beverage, which is a clear liquid that comes in a small bottle and tastes just like uzo.

And then ALL the red flags start flying up. The waiter comes over with the bottle, then starts laying down about 7 or 8 appetizers- mixed nuts, sliced carrots, sliced cucumbers, and other things which all hint at high mark-up value. I get a little nervous. He opens up the 40 lira bottle and pours us each a glass. Immediately two girls from the bar come and sit with us. The guy I’m with gets an older blonde, and they exchange few words. I get a young, attractive, eastern European girl with a nice smile and short, brown hair. She tells me that she’s from Kyrgyzstan.

Now, I was an English teacher, and I know what it’s like to force a conversation- this girl starts forcing a conversation hard, and has no tact about it, just “how are you doing?” “Where are you from?” And after that, goes back to “How are you doing?” “So… how are you?”

Our conversation fades and she asks me to buy her a drink. I say,

“Hey, I’m sorry but I’m just a poor backpacker. I really don’t have much money.”

The guy I’m with starts encouraging me.

“My friend, it’s not big deal, just buy the girl a drink. One drink. You’re on vacation, live a little.”

The waiter is looming over, and is offering similar coercion. I make it very clear and say,

“Look, I’m sorry guys, I don’t have the money. You’re very sweet (spoken to the girl) but I’m just a poor traveler.”

Both girls leave, and my ‘friend,’ who was all smiles before, is now very quiet and awkward. We endure a few minutes of heavy silence until he says, “Hey, if you’re not interested in this place, we can just pay the bill and leave.”

“That’d be great,” I say.

He flags over the waiter who brings us the bill, and I look to see that it is 1,100 Lira. I had a brain fart and it took me a few seconds to see the extra zero. My inner monologue was something like, “Wow… 110 lire, that sucks, but whatever, I just want to get out of- oh my god!!”

I tell the friendly guy, “What the fuck, you told me 40, I can’t pay this.”

“What,” he responds with shock. “I thought we would be here all night?”

He says this even though I had told him earlier that I needed to catch my train at 11 o’clock.

He keeps saying, “No, no we split the bill, it’s no problem,” and he pulls out a credit card.

This goes back and forth, and he even says,

“gee, I wish you told me that you didn’t have that kind of money on you. I wish I had known.”

The waiter comes back over and says the manager would like to see me, and points to a back room behind the bar, far from the exit.

Looking at a back room, I imagine a cartoonishly nervous ‘gulp,’ escaping me.

“I’m not going into a back room,” I say. “I don’t feel safe. He can come out here to talk to me if he wants.”

This exchange goes back and forth for a few more minutes, until the manager comes out to the bar, and I walk over to him, now a good ten meters from the exit.

The guy is stout and bald and has shoulder muscles bulging from his button-up shirt. The conversation starts out civil, with him asking what the problem is. I tell him,

“Look, this dude told me 40 lira for a drink, he ordered the drink. Not me. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m happy to pay 40 lira, but I’m not paying 550.”

He quickly loses his temper and slaps me in the back of the head, I yell back with a “Hey!”

A man suddenly appears on my left- a dirty looking guy with pale skin, deepset eyes, and black hair. He hisses at me loudly (he ACTUALLY hisses) and pushes me back. I now realize I’m caught with a wall at my back. The big, bald guy is in front of me. The creepy, hissing guy to my left, and the once friendly guy to my right. The club seems more dim over here, with pulsating lights coming from the other corner of the bar- it makes it difficult to get my bearings on what my surroundings are.

Five or six guys, maybe customers, maybe employees, walk past us and go into a backroom- possibly a broom closet. I become keenly aware that I am surrounded, with a backroom just behind me, and an unknown amount of men all around me. Thoughts of running for the exit come and go, and I suddenly imagine that scene from Fight Club where Brad Pitt gets his face beaten in. It makes me wonder if Hollywood blood looks like real blood.

The manager and I go back and forth, with him asking for money, and me saying I don’t have it. I start yelling at the 'drinks-are-40-lira' guy, saying that he fucked me over. The manage yells at me, saying,

“If you will not pay me my money, I swear to god I will take it by force!”

At this, he sticks a big fist in my face.

I’m definitely scared at this point, but do my best to keep calm, and not give them an inch. I tell him again,

“The other guy ordered it, he should pay for it.”

Next the manager and the 40-lira-drink guy start asking me how much money I have on me. If I don’t have the full amount, I can just pay whatever I have. I respond with,

“I don’t know how much money I have” (I did know, and the amount was about $300, which I did not want to part with).

The manager says, “Just check, take out your wallet and check.”

I refuse and say “I don’t feel safe doing that here. I’m not going to check my wallet here. If you want me to check, I’ll do it outside.”

I stonewall the manager and make it very clear that I’m not going to budge on this issue. The manager tells me that I can check in the bathroom, where I’ll feel safer.

So I go into a bathroom stall. I take most of my money out from my wallet, and stuff it into a jacket pocket, leaving only a fraction of my money in my wallet. Now, this was a tricky decision to make, and one that had to be made fast. How much money did I want to part with?

‘If I have too little in my wallet,’ my mind pondered, ‘the guy might call bullshit, and search me. If I have too much money, well then I lose my money.’

I decide that 170 lira is a believable amount. Three 50’s and two 10’s. It’s a lot of money for a poor traveler, but a far cry from the approximately 550 lira ($166) dollars he was originally asking for.

So I walk out in a huff, and show him my wallet and say look,

“This is all I have, see?”

He says, “I want to search you. I have hidden cameras in the bathroom. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

I say, “No, you can’t search me. Look, this is all my money, ok! I can’t even get home now!”

(And the Oscar goes to…)

The manager takes my 170, hands my 20 note back to me, presumably for cab fare, then shoos me away.

I walk out of the bar feeling stupid, and numb, and violated, and angry at the world. I march up to a policeman, thinking ‘screw those guys. I’m not gonna take this lying down!’

This all took place around Taksim Square, and there are cops everywhere.

I approach the cop, saying, “Excuse me sir, how can I report a crime. I was just robbed.”

He responds with, “I don’t understand you,” spoken with a perfect accent.

I point to the cop next to him and ask “English?” I get an angry glare, as if to say, ‘don’t bother us.’

I walk down the road to a cop car with two policemen in it, and one outside.

“I say excuse me. I need to report a crime, I was just robbed.”

The driver shrugs and looks bored and says something to the extent of “No English. Go away.”

I look to his companion and get little more than a shrug.

My feelings of being robbed are now compounded with my frustration that the cops can’t, or won’t, help me. So then I start asking the local employees- bakery workers, hotel workers, “Where is a police station?”

Many don’t understand English. One guy directs me to a video game store because he understood ‘playstation.’

I tell him no, “police. PO-LICE. STA-TION.”

He says “oh….” and gives me some convoluted directions. I start following his directions, walking through the crowds of Istanbul. While on my search, a friendly guy on the street approaches me and starts trying to chat me up. “Hello, my friend, where are you from?” In my mind, I’m screaming ‘fuck you, I’m on to your scam.’ But I want to know if he’s another crook and I say “Hello, yea, I’m from America.”

He says, “Hey, there’s a great local bar over here,” and he points to the bar I had JUST come from.

I respond, with a beleaguered sigh and say,

“Yea, I was just there. They already robbed me.”

“No, it’s nothing like-

“Look, was JUST there, alright, they just fucking robbed me. Why do you have to be such a fucking dick?”

“No, my friend, it’s-

“No! I’m going to the police, alright. Why do you have to be such a dick!”

(I’m not exactly a wordsmith when I’m frazzled.)

So I go down these back alleys and I actually find the police station. I find two bored looking officers in bullet proof vests sitting on chairs in front of a squad car. One is burdened with such ennui that he has placed the butt of his rifle on the ground, and with his finger on the tip of the barrel, spins it around like a top. A third guard stands, pacing before the police station, which appears closed.

I say to the standing guard.

“Hello, this is police station?”

He gives me an annoyed look and shrugs.

“English?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

I look to the bored man, spinning his AR-15 with his fingertips.

“You speak English?”

“A little.”

“I was robbed. I want to talk to police station.”

His facial expression wanders somewhere between boredom and apathy, and he just kind of shrugs. I look to his peer and receive no encouragement.

I walk away, feeling that it’s best not to test the patience of bored men with machine guns.

I go back to my hostel, still struggling with the same emotions of anger, self-derision, vulnerability, frustration, and the occasional fantasy about suddenly going all Hulk on the assholes and tearing apart the establishment.

Setting. Dark Night Club. Inside.

Julian is cornered by three thieves.

Julian - You wouldn’t like me when I’m ANGRY!! AAAAGGHH!!

Thieves – (collectively) Oh no, we’re sorry. We’ve clearly messed with the wrong guy- we’ll change our ways!

Julian, in Hulk form, rips the wooden bar from the wall and throws it across the room. In a rage, he runs through the wall, and disappears into the night.

End scene.

But let’s get real. This was an important lesson for me. And honestly, not a terribly costly one. It sucks to lose $50, but I know people who have lost thousands. When I was in Shanghai, a teacher there was kidnapped, beaten until he gave his debit card and pin number, and wasn’t released until his life savings had been drained- police didn’t do a thing for him either. I know people who rented a motorbike, had it stolen, and when they returned to the scooter-shop empty handed, were forced to pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. I know people who had their thousand-dollar cameras stolen. People who had been burgled in the night and lost Mac Book Pros.

I’m upset about what happened to me, as well as the vulnerable situation I allowed myself to be in. But I try to put it into perspective, so as not to lose my love for travel, or for Istanbul- which really is a wonderful city. I will be A LOT more careful in the future. I will wear a money belt, and have very little money in my actual wallet. I’ll have to keep my guard up more. And I'll use this lesson to protect myself against what could have been much costlier confrontations in the future.

I’ve been abroad for almost five years now, and this was really the first time I’ve ever had violence threatened against me for money. Hopefully I can make it at least another five years.