Cihangir Cats

Yesterday, I went with two friends and one dog, to the Sahir Hatlari ferry boat station in Eminonu, to travel to the Princes islands for a day at the beach.
We chose this route because one friend had telephoned their head office a few days earlier to verify there were no regulations other than a muzzle for dogs on their ferries, and they had gone from this same iskele with the same dog, a few days prior to this trip.
When we got there, 15mins before departure, we noticed one of the staff was watching us intently…. He waited until all three of us had paid before, smirking, he came over and told us that the dog couldn’t travel on the ferry unless we had a cage, in which the dog had to wear a muzzle… we tried to explain he’d been able to travel without comment with just a muzzle just a few days before, however there ensued a heated argument, when four of the staff were shouting and refused to let us on the boat or to refund our money, instead giving us vouchers which we didn’t want because there’s no way we would ever travel with Sahir Hatlari ever again….. during this farce, the manager told us he’d called the police… bring it on, we thought…
I was taking photos when the police arrived, and this thug hit me in the arm, shouting at me to “clean your phone” (he broke the case) but I refused and hit him with my carrier bag…. He tried to knee me in the stomach but I moved quicker than he’d anticipated and he had to settle for shoving me out into the street… all the time the ferry employees were crying “please get out or you’ll be badly hurt” because they could see this policeman was a lunatic and they seemed to be very sorry they’d called the police… as you can see, this nutcase obviously had experience of trying to protect his identity from the camera with his hand up to obscure his face…
I’m writing to the ferry company and I will publish together with their response, if any to my complaint and suggestions that IF they have a valid reason for insisting that dogs have to be caged, then perhaps it falls to the ferry companies to actually provide this service, rather then for dog owners to carry cages to and from the ferries…. Please do share this post.