COMPETITION between Uber and the taxi industry tends to be fierce everywhere. In Turkey it has turned violent. Over the past month, some Uber drivers in Istanbul, the only Turkish city where the ride-sharing firm operates regularly, have been beaten, and on at least one occasion shot at, by disgruntled cabbies. A union of taxi drivers has taken Uber to court, asking the authorities to block access to its app. (The country has already banned Wikipedia and Booking.com, an online travel agent, as well as thousands of other web pages.) The union’s boss recently accused Uber of being part of a “thieving Jewish lobby”.
Most of Istanbul’s cabbies are perfectly nice people who resort neither to violence nor to anti-Semitism when faced with new market entrants or afternoon traffic. But too many are swindlers, chain-smokers and speed addicts. On a recent trip across town, your correspondent spent 15 hair-raising minutes trying to calm an elderly driver who regularly succumbed to a series of twitches, popped out of...Continue reading
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