Sejla Zonic: Flower Scam Near Istanbul's Galata Tower
The singer said on Instagram that a boy near Galata Tower demanded 50 euros for flowers, after which a crowd surrounded her and her team until they fled in two taxis.
Singer Sejla Zonic said on Instagram today that she ran into an unpleasant encounter with a group of scammers in Istanbul’s Taksim district, near Galata Tower, after a performance.
Zonic, the winner of the Zvezde Granda talent show, told her followers how an ordinary walk with her team after the concert turned into a situation they had to flee by taxi. The post was the first public account of the incident, even though it happened right after her performance in the city ended.
It all started, the singer says, when an unfamiliar boy pushed flowers into her hands.
When we got to Galata Tower, a boy came up and put flowers in my hands.
The flowers were not a gift. The boy immediately demanded money for them, and when the singer tried to hand them back, he would not let it go.
The boy kept demanding 50 euros the whole time, and when we refused, he demanded that all of us stop.
According to her account, the boy asked everyone in the group to take out their wallets and show him their money. Meanwhile, Zonic noticed a man walking behind them who appeared to be on a video call. She later realized he was actually filming them.
The situation kept getting worse. At one point the boy made a phone call, and more people quickly gathered around the group, from a supposedly drunk man asking for a cigarette to another man offering the same rose the boy had given the singer earlier, along with beer and a taxi ride.
The whole episode, from the moment the boy pushed the flowers into her hands to the escape in two taxis, unfolded, by her account, without a break in which the group could calmly assess the situation. The number of people around them grew steadily, with each new person arriving with a fresh excuse.
Once the crowd around them reached about ten people, packed into a space of just three or four meters, the group decided to run.
Within a circle three or four meters around us, so many people gathered that all of us bolted for the first taxi.
Since they could not all fit into one car, they split between two taxis. The boy would not let one of them leave.
The boy literally stood in front of the taxi and wouldn’t let it leave. The driver physically moved him aside.
Zonic also shared her own theory about why the whole scene was being filmed. She suspected the boy may have been deliberately provoking the group so that one of them would react physically, giving the scammers footage they could later use to extort money.
The part of the team that reached the hotel before the others, the singer says, could not bring themselves to go inside until they were sure everyone else had arrived safely. Only once the whole group was back together, by her account, did the danger pass.
In short, according to the singer’s account, the sequence went like this:
- a boy pushed flowers into her hands near Galata Tower and immediately demanded 50 euros
- the group noticed a man following and filming them while pretending to be on a video call
- more people gathered around the group, each with a different excuse, from a cigarette to a taxi offer
- the group fled in two taxis, one of which the boy physically blocked until the driver moved him aside
The incident happened after her performance in Istanbul, in a part of the city known for tourists but also for scammers who target foreigners near its most visited landmarks, such as Galata Tower.
