The ongoing problems in Turkey reminded me of my own experience in that country in 2013!
The end of our otherwise beautiful holiday in Turkey in May-June 2013 nearly became a nightmare.
Protests and sit-ins about some local issue had already started at Taksim Square by the time we returned to Istanbul, where we were to spend the last two days before returning to San Franciso. Our hotel was very close to the Square and we even walked by the protest on our first ‘free’ afternoon.
It seemed it would peter out soon, but by the time we came back to the hotel, it had somehow snowballed into a huge protest with the typical shouting and screaming into megaphones and people jostling with police and general mayhem. We could hear the chaos and chanting of slogans well into the night but it still seemed under control.
It all seemed quiet enough the next morning when we left for our day trip out of Istanbul but that evening, we learnt that it had become a major national protest against the government and had spread all over Turkey. We started becoming anxious because we were supposed to leave for the airport after breakfast the next morning. Our local tour manager tried to play it down, but the noise from the protest just down the road was increasing ominously by the minute. Very soon, we started hearing the pop-pop of police guns being fired and saw the greenish smoke of tear gas shells exploding from the hotel window. The hotel’s gate was locked and we were advised to stay indoors and away from the windows.
Through the restless night we could hear the protestors and it continued as we had our early breakfast. They had just opened the glass doors of the hotel lobby when they discovered some sort of shell just outside the door. Some people said it was an unexploded tear gas shell while others insisted it was an unexploded grenade.
That is when we started panicking. The police were called and they safely carried it off, while we all stood back and watched with trepidation and awe.
We boarded the bus and started off to the airport. It was quite early in the morning which is probably why the driver thought it was ok to take the route through Taksim Square. But it was not ok. There were hordes of protestors already there and in an instant, our bus was surrounded by an angry mob. They probably realized that the bus was full of American tourists which is never a good thing during any kind of civil disturbance anywhere in the world.
The tour manager told us to keep our heads down and not look at the abusing protestors though a lot of them were banging on the doors and windows and abusing us. Honestly, my wife and I were praying desperately and I suspect many other passengers were too.
The situation and the mood were ugly and we knew if they managed to breach the door, we were done for. A lot of them had masks on and were carrying the flags of the protest and some had just the pole which was being brandished meaningfully. The driver had rolled down his window and he was yelling and arguing our case. Even our tour manager caught some nasty abuses and had quietly backed into her seat, leaving the driver to talk us out of the increasingly dangerous looking situation.
I think it took some 15-20 minutes for the driver to reach some kind of understanding with the mob, but we did notice that he had pulled out the protest’s red flag from under his seat and it was now fluttering outside his window. Inch by inch, he managed to crawl out of there as the banging and abusing continued. We were on tenterhooks. If we encountered police on the way, we would be mistaken for protestors and God alone knew what turn that would take.
He drove through the city with that flag on the window. Luckily there seemed to be no police on the way and we heaved a sigh of relief when we reached the airport. There was a small burst of spontaneous clapping for the driver as everybody rushed into the relative safety of the airport.
We asked the driver via the tour manager what would have happened if he had come across the police of the way. Apparently, he said “Don’t worry, I am carrying the government’s flag also under my seat!”.