GUILTY Turkey - Sarai Sierra, 33, NY woman murdered, Istanbul, 21 Jan 2013 - #3

[ToutCa]

Really? This happened in Turkey?

A guy slept with a woman and filmed it. Filmed it? Really?

And then threatened to put in on the Internet? The Internet?

Yeah but this was a CARPET SALESMAN.

You know those carpet salesmen. They're shifty. And sneaky. And their shops are so dusty and dank.

Yashim I think you've had too much coffee today already!!! You're getting even more sarcastic than I am when annoyed!!!!

 

[delal]

I don't really understand your reply yashim.

I'm not saying that couldn't happen anywhere. It's just an example of some of the kinds of people hanging out/working in Sultanahmet, a place where Sarai was spending time.

 

[MLE]

Yeah but this was a CARPET SALESMAN.

You know those carpet salesmen. They're shifty. And sneaky. And their shops are so dusty and dank.

Never trust a carpet salesman with a *advertiser censored* star mustache.

 

[ThinkHard]

That's why I asked about her necklace. If it was exposed, it would be a total giveaway that she was Christian and given that most of the Christians in Turkey are Catholic, someone might assume she was Catholic.

(I am using the term Catholic here to include all Catholic and Orthodox rites as I was brought up calling them "Greek Catholic" or "Orthodox Catholic", etc)

I know you were generalizing, but the thing is most Christians in turkey as well as other predominantly Muslim countries would not consider themselves catholic. They would consider themselves Coptic Christians.

I was born and raised catholic and I have been to many weddings of Coptic Christians, mostly Armenians living with Turkish roots, or Coptic Christians from Egypt. And they are quite distinctly different from Catholics.

Hate crimes against Armenians, I would think would have more to do with being Armenian and less to do with religion. I'm guessing the women killed who were Armenian were known of Armenian origin because they may have lived in an Armenian neighborhood in Istanbul.

I don't think this has anything to do with Sarai's murder. Additionally I just want to add that hate crimes against Armenians in turkey today are extremely rare. And many many Armenians live very happy and peacefully in turkey. I actually know an old Armenian grandmother who moved to the US far later in life, who insists Istanbul is the best place for Armenians to grow up.

The Armenian Turkish conflict is a very complicated and very often misunderstood part of Turkish history. What happened, is awful, and very very sad, but it also happened before the Turkish Republic was founded, and happened under ottoman rule, many Turks do not identify it as being part of Turkish history, but part of ottoman history. When the republic was founded in 1923, the country, Ataturk specifically, went through great pains to modernize turkey, to move it away from barbaric ottoman images, he changed the alphabet to roman letters, secularized the country, and tried to make it more Europeanized. Turks today tend to focus the roots from this point forward, and regardless of if it is right or not sometimes neglect certain aspects of their countries history, that happened before that. That includes what happened to the Armenians. They do not learn about it in school, so most Turks grow up having no clue about that part of history. (I know that could be considered a whole other issue).

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...ul-racist-attacks-armenian-women-samatya.html

 

[ThinkHard]

Nice! thanks for saving me the time to answer. The number we need is SS's iPad's MAC address. From there LE would need to know which ISP SS used to access the internet at a given time (AirBNB's ISP), then we'd have a public IP address to back check sites she may have visited using her iPad's MAC address...kind of working in reverse in order to track down what sites she visited. Totally possible IF we had her MAC address. I wonder is SS's family still have the box for her iPad, they usually have the MAC address on a sticker. Then again Apple is too sexy to clutter their pretty white boxes with important info.

Right but they were able to track all her gmail correspondences, so they would be able to determine what IP address they came from, thus having her apple IP address....at least I would think...

 

[ToutCa]

CRAZY AMERICAN THEORY OF THE DAY ACTUALLY SEEN IN PRINT:
Sarai's husband, devastated by Sarai's infidelity, imitated Turkish men for months to draw her to Turkey.
She met up with one of these men, who in reality was a hit man controlled by her husband. Source? Nothing, seems to be making the round of American message boards and comments on media articles.

CRAZY TURKISH THEORY OF THE DAY ACTUALLY SEEN IN PRINT:
Sarai was involved in smuggling nuclear material.
Source? Two separate old fiction spy novels a journalist likes. Yes, he says in print that's where he got the theory from. And he doesn't appear to be kidding.

And no, I won't provide links for these!!! But both are true.

 

[CMac2]

Never trust a carpet salesman with a *advertiser censored* star mustache.

Never trust ANYONE with a *advertiser censored*-stache!

 

[CMac2]

CRAZY AMERICAN THEORY OF THE DAY ACTUALLY SEEN IN PRINT:
Sarai's husband, devastated by Sarai's infidelity, imitated Turkish men for months to draw her to Turkey.
She met up with one of these men, who in reality was a hit man controlled by her husband. Source? Nothing, seems to be making the round of American message boards and comments on media articles.

CRAZY TURKISH THEORY OF THE DAY ACTUALLY SEEN IN PRINT:
Sarai was involved in smuggling nuclear material.
Source? Two separate old fiction spy novels a journalist likes. Yes, he says in print that's where he got the theory from. And he doesn't appear to be kidding.

And no, I won't provide links for these!!! But both are true.

Your "Crazy American Theory of the Day..." would have been a lot more crazy if we weren't coming off the heels of that Manti Teo nonsense here in the states. He fell head over heals in love with that chick who ended up being a gay man who decided he really wasn't gay and has subsequently been cured.

It seems truth really is stranger than fiction at times, no?

 

[lavy]

This is O/T, and Yashim is going to go bananas, but my favorite Istanbul true scam was this one: handsome, well-dressed young local man meets young tourist woman. He invites her and her 3 friends to dinner with his friends. All of the guys are polite, young, handsome, well-dressed, charming. They take the ladies to a 5-star restaurant and all have a great time. As the meal is winding down, the guy gets a text from a friend outside promising them free tickets to a club. The guys leave to pick them up. The girls wait. And wait. And wait. The guys are never seen again. The girls have to pick up the $1200 meal tab themselves!!!!

I'm not saying it happens often in Istanbul, but WOW. I am no scammer, but all that just for a free 5-star meal? I have to admire the audacity of these guys, along with their willingness to go to great lengths for gourmet cooking!!!!!

Thats sad but thats one of the most popular international tourist scams.

I vividly remember reading about this one girl who was on a trip in Japan. She met with two girls who said lets go to a traditional tea house. At some point she noticed something is not right so she only ordered a can of coke but still ended up with 600$ bill.

 

[Yashim]

Quite frankly, there's been a lot of irrelevant chitchat here, so I don't see what's wrong with this poster commenting on whatever the heck s/he wants.

My aim was not to defend Turkey or justify any possible weakness or unfairness of Turkish law enforcement. It was only a call to concentrate on what matters. The context required me to say "let's not dwell on Turkey's political issues", on another post I might have said "President Obama's Chicago visit is not relevant here" or "Puerto Rican food does not fall within the scope of this discussion."

In fact, I totally agree with you. I support people's freedom to express themselves without even worrying about political correctness and similar constraints.

But when somebody comes up and says:

"Hi, my name is ABC. This is my first post. Your mother's fat and your father is bald. Therefore, Turks are murderers."

Then, I begin to sense an ulterior motive there.

Otherwise, I think we not only have no right to impose limits on what each other has to say, but we are also obliged to respect each others' posts and encourage active participation of all members.

Yet, sometimes you just know, Bourne. Can't always prove it, but you just know.

 

[lavy]

CRAZY TURKISH THEORY OF THE DAY ACTUALLY SEEN IN PRINT:
Sarai was involved in smuggling nuclear material.
Source? Two separate old fiction spy novels a journalist likes. Yes, he says in print that's where he got the theory from. And he doesn't appear to be kidding.

And no, I won't provide links for these!!! But both are true.

:floorlaugh:
Are you sure you don't speak Turkish? I don't remember any of us translating that one. Partly because I was bewildered when I saw it and spent rest of my day tracking down my FBI connections to ask if that is possible. Unfortunately they told me if I write any details about it international nuclear stuff mafia will be extremely scared to talk to LE.

 

[ToutCa]

Turkish journalists are starting to get as frustrated as we are -- they are starting to grumble about imposed media black-outs on the investigation...

 

[KuriousKev]

Back row in green hat, cannot see her face? Behind the man w brown Tammy like hat.

The tall black guy in the back in the Yankees cap...might have seen him in a photo just with him and SS from the same photo walk?

I don't see SS. Unless she climbed the tree out of frame or is in the window of one of the office buildings...Did she take the picture?

Correct Yellow. head down hiding or texting.

 

[lavy]

Lavy reported this morning that mainstream Turkish TV news says cops are looking hard at 5 suspects, some of them online contacts.

I guess the big question right now is if it was a local contact/pal/guide, some sort of partner in illicit activity of some kind, or a random assault.

Something I forgot to mention there is they say results are expected in 2 weeks.

 

[ThinkHard]

While looking for that link, I came across this page: http://www.virtualtourist.com/trave...Dangers-Istanbul-warnings_for_women-BR-1.html

Some of you may find it interesting - some people's first hand accounts of visiting Turkey warning others.
I especially liked this part:

"A foreigner woman visiting Turkey shouldn't never show her neck, neckline, belly button, back or legs if she doesn't want to be seen as a prostitute or a woman desperately looking for sex."

Ha ha. This is obviously where I've been going wrong all these years, daring to show my neck out in public.

Hahaha that's hilarious maybe they should tell that to all the Russian tourists who visit Bodrum in the summer!!

 

[Yashim]

Yeah but this was a CARPET SALESMAN.

You know those carpet salesmen. They're shifty. And sneaky. And their shops are so dusty and dank.

Yashim I think you've had too much coffee today already!!! You're getting even more sarcastic than I am when annoyed!!!!

:furious::furious::furious:


OK, that's it!!! This was the last straw. I am taking blood and sperm samples from everybody in this thread. All of you are possible suspects in this case.


:floorlaugh::floorlaugh::floorlaugh:

 

[ToutCa]

:floorlaugh:
Are you sure you don't speak Turkish? I don't remember any of us translating that one. Partly because I was bewildered when I saw it and spent rest of my day tracking down my FBI connections to ask if that is possible. Unfortunately they told me if I write any details about it international nuclear stuff mafia will be extremely scared to talk to LE.

Nah, I'm just adept with various online translation tools. Your language is too hard for me to learn without taking a serious course.

LOL I hope you are joking about your FBI connections... :what:

 

[ToutCa]

Correct Yellow. head down hiding or texting.

OMG WHAT IS SHE HIDING FROM???!!! CLEARLY THAT IS SUSPICIOUS!!!

I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO SHE WAS TEXTING AND TO HAVE THE EXACT WORDS OF THE TEXT. WHERE WAS TAYLAN THE EXACT INSTANT THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN???!!!

coming down... off sleuthing addiction....coming down....slowly....slowly....

 

[KuriousKev]

OMG WHAT IS SHE HIDING FROM???!!! CLEARLY THAT IS SUSPICIOUS!!!

I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO SHE WAS TEXTING AND TO HAVE THE EXACT WORDS OF THE TEXT. WHERE WAS TAYLAN THE EXACT INSTANT THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN???!!!

coming down... off sleuthing addiction....coming down....slowly....slowly....

haha or better yet, who's the old creepy balding guy standing next to her? he clearly is an antiques dealer!!

 

[Yashim]

OMG WHAT IS SHE HIDING FROM???!!! CLEARLY THAT IS SUSPICIOUS!!!

I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO SHE WAS TEXTING AND TO HAVE THE EXACT WORDS OF THE TEXT. WHERE WAS TAYLAN THE EXACT INSTANT THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN???!!!

coming down... off sleuthing addiction....coming down....slowly....slowly....

And where was Taylan when the photo was taken!

What was he doing? Eating? Eating where?

In a restaurant? Which restaurant? What type of dishes were served?

Did LE examine the menu? I want to see the menu!

Can somebody please send me the menu?

And do they deliver?

Because if they do, I'm gonna need their phone number, too!