TNT Smoke & Mirrors Edition: Fake Police Station in Istanbul (mid-1950s)/Part I

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Cumhuriyet Sunday Magazine, 11 December 2016)


                  Police (Ret.) Benevolent Association HQS

In the 1950s, three police officers at the Sirkeci police station in
Istanbul retired and then contemplated what they could do to
supplement their incomes in retirement.  They came up with the idea
to "establish our own police station" and this is how the 'Küçükpazar
Police Station' came to be.  Lütfü Dağtaş wrote about the story a few
years ago in the Cumhuriyet Pazar Dergi (Cumhuriyet Sunday
Magazine).

Once again we proved to the Western world that ours is an enterprising
nation.  We may be found lacking in the technology realm but we have
no competition in the field of profitable endeavors that don't require
capital.  A Turk opened a fake U.S. embassy in Ghana that stayed open
for 10 years until Washington realized what had happened and when
this same fellow saw the profit in his undertaking he opened a fake
Dutch embassy, too.

When I read about this last week I recalled the story of the three ex-
cops who opened a fake police station in Küçükpazar in the mid-1950s,
shaking down the local merchants in the neighborhood.  So we are the
heirs to these guys who set up and ran the fake police station right under
the nose of the real Sirkeci Police Directorate and the Hal and Köprüler
police station.  This was about as bold as setting up fake embassies in a
foreign country.

fake U.S. embassy in Ghana click here for the BBC story.


One-stop shopping in Accra: pick up a visa & get your 
laundry done.

At the time of the fake U.S. embassy incident, in Turkey the dollar had
passed 3500, there was a crisis with the EU, the Prime Minister system
was being debated and young children had been burned alive in a fire
at a dormitory in Adana run by the Süleymancı sect.   So the news
about the embassy was a bit of a laugh for us, by comparison. 

It seemed that some of our entrepreneurial Turkish fellows in Ghana
had bribed some local officials to open the fake U.S. embassy and it
operated for 10 years.  Most of the 'customers' wanted visas for the
U.S. and to add an element of authenticity our 'ambassadors' handed
out embassy brochures from the American embassies in Togo and the
Ivory Coast.

So what if patent applications in Turkey are less than in undeveloped
nations, so what if we're second from the bottom in the PISA (OECD
program for international student assessments) list, so what if our
technology exports are in the minor leagues?  When it comes to making
money with inventive schemes that don't require much capital input no
one is our equal other than, perhaps, a couple of Balkan countries and
Italy.

//END of PART ONE//