Once again, we found ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, I suppose if you were a journalist, it’d be the right place, but when you are the parents of young children, you most certainly do not want to be in Kadiköy (a major pier) when there is a massive crowd of people wearing ribbons, waving flags, chanting and marching…all under the watchful eyes of a contingent of police officers with clubs, tasers, and shields. We hurried past the crowds but ended up walking quite far before finding any transportation as the streets were teeming with people. Prince and Princess just kept looking around with wide eyes.
We never did find out what the commotion was about, but this has happened twice before. Once, we were in Kadiköy and there was a mob of people chanting and marching with signs, and after arriving safely at home, we saw on the news that they were protesting the merging of two banks and the police used tear gas and water guns on them. We are so glad we weren’t there for that.
The other time we were coming back from the European side in the evening and ended up in Kadiköy a few hours before a huge football (soccer) match between two rivals. The streets were packed from curb to curb with very enthusiastic fans and the matched hadn’t even started yet. We ended up walking almost the entire way home, which is more than two miles.
