Sıcak Fuzz

“Why do the police carry machine guns?”

It’s true. If you see a police officer on patrol in Istanbul, Turkey, it’s quite likely that at his side (I’ve never seen a female police officer) there will be an MP5 sub-machine gun.

Now, if someone were to shoot a woman in front of a policeman, I imagine the officer wouldn’t be able to use that weapon, for fear of also shredding the dozens of civilians that occupy just about any street in Istanbul. They’d have to chase on foot, which is probably harder to do with an MP5 slung on your shoulder.

It’s also odd that police officers in Turkey don’t patrol the streets as much as they guard the police station—a more militaristic, bunker approach. If you were mugged on Istiklal Caddesi (Istanbul’s busiest street—probably in the top ten worldwide), you might be able to find a police officer to help you. But walk a hundred meters down a particular side-street, and you’ll run into the police station, most likely with half a dozen heavily armed police officers standing outside of it. A Turkish friend of mine assures me that police stations are a common target of terrorist attacks, so these battle formations are necessary, but I have been unable to find any news reports of it myself.

My first five months in Turkey, I managed to avoid police officers altogether. In the last month and a half, I have been less lucky.

When my back pack was stolen in Antalya in early February, I was at a police station within the hour. I didn’t have any illusions that my backpack would be recovered, but I supposedly needed to file a police report to get a new passport from the US Consulate.

Kafka wrote about days like this. Of the ten or so police officers in the station at this time, everyone was busy, but no one was working. Walk around. Check on things. Shuffle some papers. Talk to someone waiting to make a police report. Smoking break. Drink çay. Bam—you’re a police officer, and you even get to carry a machine gun.

The long wait was on account of a translator since my Turkish wasn’t good enough to fully explain what happened.

“I can call a friend who speaks Turkish and she can translate,” I said.

“No. We’ll have a translator.”

An older man with bloodshot eyes, a fat lip, and a gash on his forehead tells the officers he has a friend who knows some English.

“No. We have a translator.”

For three hours thereafter I waited for the translator, whose arrival was as mysterious and elusive as the messiah’s. At various times I was told:

“The translator is coming.”

“The translator will be here in a half hour.”

“There is no translator.”

Finally, the officers advised me to leave my phone number with them; they’d call me when the translator arrived. I was mostly relieved when that call never came. And luckily the US Consulate never asked for my police report.

I interacted with Turkish police again this past weekend when I was renewing my tourist visa. The process is shady—take a bus from Istanbul to the border, cross the border, turn around, and buy a new visa. My sense is that it’s frowned upon but too common for officers to prevent it.

There’s also a nuance in the geography of the border. First there’s the gate to leave Turkey. A kilometer or so away is the gate to enter Bulgaria. In between is a complex that includes a police station.

The last time I executed this immigration maneuver I simply exited Turkey, went through the police station, and re-entered Turkey, without ever officially entering Bulgaria. This time a police officer said I had to go into Bulgaria. It was snowing outside with a strong wind that blew the icy rain into your face, and my feet were already frozen.

“I did this before and I didn’t have to go all the way to Bulgaria.”

“The rules changed.”

Anyone who believes the police officer at this point in the story should never travel. Rules clearly didn't matter to this person. When I entered the room he and his co-worker had been surfing YouTube, which is illegal in Turkey. Unable to articulate my skepticism and discontent in Turkish, I made the walk, and twenty minutes later I had a new visa.

These are the extent of my own experiences with Turkish police officers, but another story I heard was less innocent. While bumming free internet at the hostel where a friend of mine works, I overheard a German woman in her mid-fifties retelling the woes of her last few days. This woman had a Turkish boyfriend who was usually “nice,” except when he beat her up.

On this occasion her boyfriend had beaten her—I didn’t catch why—and she went to the police station. Her boyfriend came too. She doesn’t speak much Turkish, so the police asked her boyfriend what happened. They decided it was a personal matter and that the two of them should just go home. The German woman said that if they don’t arrest her boyfriend he would beat her again. That’s exactly what happened.

A few minutes from the police station, he continued to beat her in the middle of the street. He broke her teeth and pulled out clumps of her hair (I could see the patches left of it on her head), but pedestrians also treated this as a personal matter. Finally two Western European young men stopped her boyfriend, and brought her back to the police station.

After this second beating in the same day, the police told the German woman they would arrest her boyfriend and keep him locked up for the night so she could leave the city, and country, without him trying to stop her. Five minutes after she had left the police station, her boyfriend called her. He had been let go by the police immediately and was now following her on the street.

This woman’s experience was horrifying of course, but it’s important we don’t exclusively blame Turkish or Muslim culture. Three of my friends have a remarkably similar story from their travels in Greece. A pregnant woman was being beaten by her husband in a public place. Here also the police and bystanders all agreed it was a personal matter.

Importantly, I don’t mean to demonize Turkish police. For example, last weekend after I received my new visa, two police officers offered to give me a ride back to the bus station in their police car. I didn’t ask for this favor, nor was there a compelling reason for them to offer it, but it saved me from waiting for public transportation in the cold. They gave me recommendations of the best places to eat, and dropped me in front of a restaurant they liked.

On the whole, however, I hope I don’t have to deal with Turkish police again before I leave.