Last December, journalist Natalia Morar was barred from entering Russia and deported to her native Moldova after a Russian weekly magazine published a series of her stories about alleged siphoning of huge sums of money out of Russia by the country's high-ranking officials (a GV translation on Morar's ordeal is here).
Earlier this month, Morar (LJ user natmorar) had a bizarre experience at Istanbul International Atatürk Airport, which she has described (RUS) on her blog:
“You are barred from entering the country, you'll be deported back to Moldova now,” a Turkish border control officer at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul explained to me in broken English, passing my documents to a promptly summoned policeman. I was beginning to believe that this was my fate: airports, deportations.
They took me to a police station, held me there for about 40 minutes. Turned out they had a 24-year-old Natalia Morar in their database, a prostitute who had been previously deported to Moldova. It took me a long time to explain that I'm not her and that she's not me. My press card and all other documents just made them even more distrustful. They must've been thinking: “What a smart prostitute, got herself shielded with documents.”
It all ended well when the cops decided to compare our ID numbers. They let me out […], asking by way of good-bye: “Turkish boyfriend, yes?” […]
Hanako TokitaLatest of 60 posts
Juan ArellanoLatest of 53 posts
Sinisa BoljanovicLatest of 15 posts
Abdurahman WarsameLatest of 4 posts
Renata AvilaLatest of 35 posts
Lova RakotomalalaLatest of 43 posts
Kelly ProctorLatest of 7 posts
Adil NurmakovLatest of 786 posts
Paula GóesLatest of 380 posts
Milton RamirezLatest of 18 posts
Fozia MohamedLatest of 28 posts
Moussa BashirLatest of 179 posts
People from Romania and Moldova always get treated with minimum of respect wherever they go, there is nothing that could surprise us. :(