KEBABBLE Hair-raising raid shames Turkey's police
By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - After a hard day's work some men like to relax in bars and
restaurants in Istanbul where rather than having to approach unknown and
perhaps intimidating women, they are provided with bar girls who are paid to
chat and flirt with them.
The drinks flow, the Hammond organ plays and everyone gets along a treat,
unless of course clients try to take affairs one stage further. Five such men,
Yusuf K, 27, Cesim G, 28, Yildirim A, 19, Mehmet D, 26 and Hakan F, 30, spent a
warm summer evening in August at a girly bar and restaurant in Avcilar, a state
of Istanbul.
At the end of the night and enamored of Miss A C, who had spent
the evening with them, the men asked the management if they could buy some more
time and take her home with them. Management refused and a prolonged argument
began which ended with the five men being roughed up and thrown into the
street.
Returning home, the five were furious. Yusuf led them in planning their revenge
on both the bar and Miss A C. Four nights later they returned to Avcilar. As
they piled out of their car, Cesim brutally knocked the bouncer at the door to
his feet.
On entering, Yusuf went over to the organist and swiftly rapped both him and
his Hammond into silence. Stunned patrons watched as Yusuf, Yildirim, Mehmet
and Hakan searched the restaurant for Miss A C. On finding her, Yusuf grabbed
her hair and viciously yanked her out of her seat. No one made any effort to
stop them as Yusuf hauled her, by the hair, out of the premises, down 50 meters
of stairs and into their car.
Security camera footage shows with startling clarity the pain and fear on Miss
A C's face, the brutal, caveman-like behavior of Yusuf, and the total
immobility of the bar's staff, management and clientele.
How did the five men manage to pull off the abduction with such little
resistance? Simple, they spent 85 lira ($54) at the Mahmutpasa bazaar on
disguises. Among their purchases was a flashing blue light which was mounted on
their dashboard and two vests with the word POLIS written on them. The
acquisition of these easily appropriated items gave them the apparent authority
to behave however they pleased.
Miss A C was subsequently taken to a house in Istanbul's suburbs and raped for
six hours. On being released she immediately went to the police and all five
men were subsequently apprehended and charged.
The case came to trial this week. A tape of the abduction was released to the
Turkish media on Monday and played throughout the night on main news shows. It
has raised questions both about the easy availability of police paraphernalia,
and the resignation with which the Turkish public respond to police brutality.
It seems that the reputation of the Turkish police for cruelty, and the many
instances of police violence broadcast on TV, make this type of appalling
behavior acceptable.
The Istanbul police chief, Celalettin Cerrah, has since held a press conference
asking the public to not trust someone's authority simply on the basis of a
uniform. "Two people in police vests go into a place of entertainment. They
forcibly remove a woman. And no one there says 'Can I see your ID card?'. And
after that no one calls 155 [the emergency line] and says this has happened.
Even if they had been real police we would have investigated this. There is no
way this sort of behavior would have been officially sanctioned. I am asking
our citizens - don't believe everyone who says he is a policeman. Always ask
for ID and if you don't believe the ID call 155 to have it verified."
He also made the belated point that it's as easy to buy items of police uniform
in other countries as it is in Turkey. In the past the market in police goods
was much less accessible, but now anyone can buy the uniform of just about any
police force in the world online in a matter of minutes.
The reality of police interactions is much more difficult to manage than Cerrah
makes it sound. In an ideal world an encounter with a presumed police officer
needs verification of identity just like that of a doctor or even a plumber.
Unlike those situations, there mostly isn't time to ask for a friend's
recommendation or to see examples of their work. In large cities where society
is made up of strangers, urban dwellers must rely on emblems like uniforms and
badges to verify a person's authenticity.
In some cases the uniforms may even be real while the wearer has no right to
use them. The opportunities for confusion are manifold, and because of the need
for immediate action law enforcement situations will always be messier than
others with respect to identification.
Although what happened to this young woman is a tragedy, perhaps the more
significant damage has been done to society as a whole. By impersonating police
as a ploy to get unobstructed access to the bar, the criminals appropriated a
social identity and manipulated the expectations of the diners of how the
police behave. They undermined whatever little trust in authority those Turkish
people had.
All who have watched the graphic incident on their television screens must have
asked themselves what they would have done in the same situation. Despite what
Cerrah encourages, there are few brave enough to question the police,
especially not when they are armed and violent. Somehow citizens are expected
to be both cooperative and skeptical, to know that the police can behave
inhumanly and yet to challenge that behavior when and if it occurs.
The abduction of a bar girl in Avcilar raises important issues for the Turkish
police whose public perception needs to be improved. Still, this incident
represents a tiny part of the modern world's maelstrom of confusion over
identity and deception.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She
moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.
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