Istanbul's taxi drivers, who have made headlines in the past due to their physical assults on customers, drew public ire again after the footage of such an incident emerged on Wednesday. The footage, taken from a security camera, shows a taxi driver violently dragging a female customer out of the backseat, hitting her head on the door before roughly pushing her to the ground and going back to driver's seat. The woman then leapt to her feet and tried to stop the car by jumping on the hood but the driver sped away.
The incident took place in Ataşehir, a district on Istanbul's Asian side, on Tuesday and the woman was identified as K.H., a French citizen of Moroccan origin and the driver was E.Y. She accused the driver of trying to defraud her. The tourist filed a criminal complaint against E.Y., who was questioned by police and released. His car was impounded when the police found that he did not have a work license while he is under investigation on charges of deliberate injury.
K.H. told police that she grew suspicious of the driver when he took a longer route to take her to her destination. She had a navigator app on her cellphone and when she noticed, she tried to get out of the cab, she said in her testimony. "He told me to pay an additional $7.2 (TL 107) as a bridge toll but he kept driving in circles. I told him that I wanted to get out. He insisted on paying the bridge toll or taking me through a longer route. Finally, he stopped and agreed to charge me $4.7 (TL 70) but I told him that I'd file a complaint. When I got out, he came over and punched me first. Then, he tossed me to the ground," she said. E.Y. told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) that the woman tried to "gouge" his eyes after their argument. "I offered to take her through the Eurasia tunnel but she did not accept paying extra money as a tunnel toll. She wanted to get off and I asked her to pay for the distance she traveled so far. She attacked me and I acted in self-defense," he said.
