Electronic devices ban: how it took the shine off a trip to Turkey

As evening enveloped Istanbul's tourist district last weekend, two shoeshiners approached me carrying the tools of their trade.

One of them dropped a brush. I walked straight past.

Here’s how this mild scam is supposed to work. The kind-hearted tourist sees the shoeshiner has lost an essential piece of kit, so picks it up and hands it back. The perpetrator feigns immense gratitude. He immediately plonks down his stool and offers the good Samaritan a shoeshine.

Once the cursory service has been administered, the atmosphere changes. It becomes clear that the shoeshine wasn’t free after all. The man is expecting cash for his trouble and, look, here’s his friend joining in to insist that €5 or 20 Turkish lire (each worth about £4.50) is the minimum charge.

Having fallen for the trick in the past, I walked on. Undeterred, the shoeshiner picked up the brush and tried again. He ran back past me and planted the brush so close to my toes that I had to swerve to avoid it.

Visitors to Istanbul this year can expect plenty of extra attention. On Thursday the tourism ministry reported that the number of German travellers to Turkey in February fell 30 per cent compared with 2016. The UK is second only to Germany in supplying tourists to Turkey; one-fifth fewer Brits visited in February than a year earlier. The nation’s biggest city is bright and beautiful, but much emptier than it deserves to be.

Travel nostalgia obliges me and anyone else who can vaguely remember the 1970s to visit the Pudding Shop when in Istanbul. This restaurant at the heart of the tourist district of Sultanahmet was once a hub on the hippie trail from London to Kathmandu. No need to reserve a table now: when I walked in for dinner last Friday night, I doubled the number of customers.

Surely the gloomy start to the year could be transformed by a good summer for Turkish tourism? For the sake of the Pudding Shop staff, the legions of underemployed hotel workers and tourist guides, and even the shoeshiners, I’d love to think so. But the latest tightening of aviation security can but heighten the sense that Turkey is dangerously distinct from other holiday destinations.

The ban on electronic devices in the cabin of flights from six Middle Eastern and North African countries to the UK makes Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey unwilling members of a club. What unites them is our government’s belief that planes flying to the UK are at risk from high explosives being smuggled into the aircraft cabin hidden in consumer electronics.

Flying back from Istanbul, I experienced what the Department for Transport calls “proportionate and effective” security measures.

My personal best for getting through a big airport terminal from drop-off to take-off is 10 minutes. I established the record in the 1980s, under unusual circumstances, from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport to Gatwick.

Last Saturday night, the same kerb-to-runway journey took over two hours. After eight separate checks (and the unexpected appearance in the “sterile” gate area of 100-plus passengers from an arriving flight), we were all allowed on board.

Flying on an airline that offers long-haul standards on a sub-four-hour flight, I missed my laptop not one bit. Thanks to Turkish Airlines’ remarkably broad and deep in-flight entertainment repertoire, I watched La La Land and then listened to the 1960s B-side by the band Traffic, “40,000 Headmen” for a reminder of the creative powers of marijuana.

What were the aviation security guys smoking when they came up with the devices ban? I appreciate that some passengers will celebrate a more onerous and intrusive airport-security process on the grounds that you can’t have too much screening. Yet if their airports really are less secure, then applying the devices ban to only a few flights to the UK and US is nonsensical.

Alexandre de Juniac, director general of the International Air Transport Association, is furious about the ban. He says: “The current measures are not an acceptable long-term solution to whatever threat they are trying to mitigate.

“Even in the short term it is difficult to understand their effectiveness. And the commercial distortions they create are severe.”

Mr De Juniac is talking about distortions between airlines. Turkish Airlines and British Airways face higher costs to pay for extra security, and lower revenue as wealthy clients, especially from the Gulf region, switch to other airlines and hubs.

But the commercial and human impact of the latest twist of the security knife ripples much further: changing travellers’ behaviour, rewarding the men of violence and depriving Istanbul’s shoeshiners of the chance to clean up.