Frustrated by the notorious discrimination of Istanbul’s taxi drivers when it comes to customers, Şerif Macit decided to run a “social experiment” in the heart of Turkey’s most populated city. After unsuccessful attempts to hitch a ride, Macit finally found a driver to pick him up and in return, he paid the driver an astronomical fee of $99 (TL 1,600).
Macit was trying to grab a taxi at Taksim Square last week to go home to transport the medical equipment required for his sick mother, who is plugged into a ventilator. He planned to travel to the hospital with the cumbersome equipment and bring his mother home after she was discharged from intensive care. When the drivers he stopped found out that he would travel for a short distance, they were unwilling to give him a ride since he would pay less. “I tried some 25 taxis, and nobody accepted me. The weather was very hot and I was tired. I was racing against time, but nobody picked me up,” he told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) on Wednesday, when he returned to the square.
This time, he was there to perform a social experiment. He said he chose Wednesday because it is also marked as Ethics Day in Turkey. As the drivers raced to pick moneyed foreign tourists across the square, Macit once again found himself without a ride for a while. Upon learning he would travel for a short distance (on the same route he sought to take last week), drivers skipped him.
Finally, a driver stopped and picked him up without questioning his destination. When the driver drove him home and dropped Macit back at Taksim Square, the customer handed him TL 1,600. “A taxi ride all across Istanbul roughly costs this much, with TL 6 per kilometer,” Macit reasoned.
Surprised by the huge fee he was handed, driver Yılmaz Çömez only accepted the fare for the distance he covered with his customer. “He told me he would go to hospital and then to another place two streets away. I gave him a lift. When I took him back to Taksim Square, he spoke about his social experiment,” he said. Çömez said he does not care where his customers want to go and takes them any place they want. “I am working in the service sector and I have to serve the people. I don’t discriminate among customers. This is what all taxi drivers are supposed to do,” he said.
