Turkish Awakening Read Free

cabs are the only legal taxis in Istanbul – there are no registered minicab company equivalents. Unlicensed ‘pirate’ taxi drivers are called korsanlar and are always extremely wary of getting caught by the police, because the penalties are huge. I once witnessed the arrest of a korsan driver, and it made a great impression on me.
    One summer evening, I was eating on the terrace of a restaurant on the historic Rue de Pera in the European heart of Istanbul. Right next door was the aged Grand London Hotel, which is one of my favourite places in the city. Magnificently outdated and kitsch, it is a dusty testament to 1930s third-rate grandeur, full of florid porcelain, incongruous brass gas stoves and several miserable-looking, mangy macaws imprisoned among the potted plants. Outside this hotel is what purports to be the official taxi stop for a famous nightclub called 360 across the road – it is, in fact, manned by a couple of opportunistic guys who have taken the aegis of 360 to advertise their own private enterprise. As I was eating, a car pulled up and immediately all the passengers piled out, shouting. A man and a woman hurried off as fast as they could, leaving a worried-looking young man and the furious, walrus-like driver to have it out. After a great deal of bewilderment, I worked out that this was a korsan taxi driver, his passengers flown, and the worried young man was an undercover policeman who was beginning to realise that he had bitten off more than he could chew.
    I will never forget that korsan driver. Middle-aged, beefy, his moustache bristling with rage, he railed against this poor policeman like some kind of supercharged King Lear, swearing his own moral superiority and denouncing the characterof the trembling young man before him with biblical fervour. After a few minutes, the policeman called for backup, and a slightly more robust-looking man turned up to take on the driver. He was very quickly reduced to the same state of intimidation, as King Korsan bellowed and fumed amid a steadily growing crowd of onlookers. The climax came when the korsan realised that the policemen had locked his car and pocketed the key; in a burst of inspiration he grabbed a chair from outside the Grand London Hotel and lifted it threateningly above the windscreen of his own car. The second policeman hurriedly pulled out his radio and within a few minutes a siren announced the arrival of a van full of riot police, plus fifteen outriders. Surrounded by police, sensing imminent defeat, the korsan was by now like a mighty, wounded stag, awesome in his rage, pitiful in his capture. For a while I could still hear his cries and see gesticulating arms through the throng of uniforms. Then, in an eye-watering finale, he staggered towards the original undercover policeman, threw his arms over him like a father, and wept.
    The disproportionate police response to an unlicensed minicab and the risible presence of the undercover officer aside, I like to think of this episode more as a spectacular lesson in the guts of the Turkish Underdog. In most countries in the West, if you’re caught breaking the law, you come quietly, avoiding the stares of passers-by. In this case, our hero seemed to be positively fuelled by a gathering crowd, pacing the pavement like a majestic baritone on the Royal Opera House stage. The law was nothing to him – convinced of his own moral integrity, he refused to give in, until literally surrounded by police with batons. I admired him enormously, andI saw a lot more of his kind of spirit during the Gezi Park protests which swept Turkey in 2013. Riot police made liberal use of batons, tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon, but the crowds just kept returning, yelling for more gas.
    For those who want a quiet life there are, of course, non-criminal substitutes for the licensed taxi. The best is the dolmuş , a shared taxi in the form of a yellow minivan with patchy seats and a marbled plastic dashboard. It is a