Adam Fletcher - Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places

Erdoan, (un)relaxing city breaks, Crippling Englishness, Gezi Park

T he first hint this wasnt going to be a relaxing city break in Istanbul came immediately upon landing. Wheeling my suitcase through the airport, I looked down at my phone to find the following SMS .

Ada: Hi Adam. Public transport has been shut down. Its a bit crazy here. Get the taxi driver to call me. Okay ?

Ada was our Airbnb host. My German girlfriend, Annett, and I had prepared for backgammon, ferry rides, tea, and eating large slabs of foreign cake. Not for craziness .

Me: Who shut it down? Getting in a taxi now

Ada: Who do you think shut it down? Get the taxi driver to call me .

I had no idea who had shut it down. It wasnt like there was a master public transport switch you could just turn off, right? Its not a floor lamp .

Me: The taxi driver says he knows the address. See you in a bit .

Ada: Get him to call me anyway. Ill tell him what roads are still open .

Me: Why are the roads closed ?

Ada: Do you watch the news? There are big protests here .

I did not watch the news. I avoided the news like other people avoided cholesterol. But thats not something you admit. Ignorance is not a virtue .

The other reason I didnt want to ask the taxi driver to call Ada was that I suffer from a hereditary disease called Crippling Englishness (CE). This renders me incapable of inconveniencing people, however mildly. Asking our taxi driver to call someone? Madness. Finding a specific address and reaching it in a motor vehicle was the mans entire job. He was a logistics professional. I looked across at him from the passenger seat. He was in his early forties, balding, and attempting to compensate for this by allowing the frizzy hair from the sides of his head to grow free from the confines of good taste. He looked more than familiar with the art of scowlinghis eyebrows sunk deep into his eyelids, reminding me of imprints in a well-worn sofa. His off-white T-shirt was flecked with recent lunches eaten at the wheel. He was muttering to himself .

So he was a shabby, irritable example of a logistics professional, but a logistics professional nonetheless. I would not call that into question by suggesting he would not be fully abreast of the latest road closures in this, his city .

The next time I looked at my watch an hour had passed. Are we nearly there? I asked. Wed just turned onto a hilly street to find it blocked by a barricade of trash, wood, and two upside-down shopping trolleys. Around us flowed a mass of young people in home-made riot gear. It looked as if there were to be a reunion party for the hit 1970s band Village People. It was the third such do-it-yourself barricade to hinder our progress in ten minutes .

Fucking idiots, said the taxi driver. He didnt seem to be abreast of any of this. He crunched the gear stick into reverse, turned around, and tried to steer us back to the road wed just come from .

What are they protesting about? I asked .

Protesting, yes, he said, his reversing manoeuvre complete. He scowled at two women carrying a large gay pride flag. Fucking Terrorists .

He didnt seem like a very nice man. The few English words he had mustered during the journey had been spat aggressively in my direction. Turkish words, I suspect of an adult nature, went the other direction, out of the driver-side window and into the faces of pedestrians, other drivers, and any inanimate objects brazen enough to be in our way. Inanimate objects he seemed to find particularly irksome .

These people dont look like terrorists, I said .

Terrorists, yes .

I wanted to debate this further but I held backmostly because he was driving as if we were in a go-kart and hed eaten a special mushroom giving him infinite lives. I looked out the windscreen at a group of protesters, at their face paint, dyed hair, ripped jeans, and multicoloured vests. I was pretty sure these were not terrorists, and were even, probably, The Good Guys. Protesters are almost always the good guys, right? Because protesting is way more effort than not :

If people can be bothered to organise a demo, write songs, paint signs, and march through the streets holding those signs and singing those songs, outraged, you can be pretty sure theyll have a valid point. On the rare occasion they dont, there will likely be an even bigger protest-protest against them. You dont see the people doing the bad things out chanting: What do we want? MORE TYRANNY! When do we want it? Well, thats up to us really, isnt it? No, you dont see those people because those people have already won .

The taxi driver pulled into yet another side street, was confronted by yet another home-made barricade, and said, yet again, Fuck .

Did you know about any of this? I asked Annett, the trips instigator. She looked at me, tutted, sighed, frowned, and rolled her eyes, all at once. When it came to communication, she was a quantity person cruelly stuck in a quality world. She took a breath to compose herself. About the protests? You betcha I knew. It was in the news. But I didnt know it was this big or that we were anywhere near it. Or in it, which it kinda seems like we are now. She looked around. Were in it, right? She twitched her nose .

We were in it .

Id made the mistake of sitting in the front of the taxi, a rare mistake of personal initiative that meant I was now responsible for liaising with the taxi driver. I hated responsibility. I hated solving. I wanted to be back home, on my couch, ignoring all of lifes problems while eating biscuits .

The next street the driver tried had a somewhat familiar feel to it. I think, perhaps, because it was the third time hed tried it. I pinched the bridge of my nose, fought off some CE, got out my phone, called Ada, and passed the phone to the driver. Ten minutes later, and five floors higher, we found ourselves standing in front of a pink door .

That door opened and a short girl in fluffy unicorn slippers wrapped me in a warm hug. The sort of hug that suggested a far deeper friendship than the simple apartment-for-money economic exchange that was actually occurring. Ada .

I wasnt sure you would come. Were you not scared ?

Annett and I exchanged a blank look that said wed have been perfectly willing to be scared if only someone had told us what about. Scared about the protests? Annett asked as she stepped into the apartments hallway. We have a lot of protests in Berlin as well .

Really? said Ada, leading us past her small green-tiled kitchen. This one is quite violent. The police are behaving like animals. You should be careful .

We wont get involved, I assured her, as we arrived in the living room. Were just here for tourist stuff .

We spread out on the living rooms giant navy corner couch. I began to relax. This was better. This was like home even, only with a little more rainbow iconography. What is the protest about? I asked, as Ada poured tea from a shiny red teapot. Thats complicated, she said. Specific things and also general things. I think, mostly, the feeling that Erdoan is trying to make the country into an Islamic state like Saudi Arabia. They even tried to ban kissing in public !