A video purporting to show an Irish tourist in a mass brawl with shopkeepers in Istanbul is taking Turkish social media by storm.
In the footage, a man described by Turkish media as an “Irish boxer/tourist” can be seen in CCTV footage accidentally spilling a fridge full of bottles of water.
This sparks an argument, before a number of shopkeepers start hitting the unarmed tourist with sticks, chairs and other blunt items.
The tourist fights back, and at one point floors a local with a single punch. Towards the end of the video the tourist appears to continue to want to fight before he is eventually calmed down and led away.
A timestamp on the video suggests the fight took place earlier this month
Shopkeepers hit the tourist with a variety of objects including sticks and chairs
At one point the tourist is completely surrounded by locals, some of whom try to break up the fight
The footage appeared on Haberturk TV on Tuesday night, and went viral on Turkish social media after it was posted to the channel’s Twitter feed, which has 500,000 followers.
Irish tourist (a boxer) who beat up a herd of shopkeeper jackals in Istanbul has gained much sympathy from many Turks, including me.
— Candan Badem (@CandanBadem) August 25, 2015
The channel said the fight took place in the Istanbul neighbourhood of Aksaray, while a date stamp on the CCTV footage suggested it happened earlier this month.
The incident has attracted huge interest among Turkish Twitter users, and a source at the Irish consulate in Istanbul told The Independent that the “fun incident” had been tweeted about 75,000 times in Turkey in less than 24 hours.
He said the Irish national had been “attacked” by shopkeepers in Istanbul’s Aksaray district after he “accidentally knocked over the bottled waters stored in the cooler”.
“The shop owner overreacted and attacked the tourist with a stick,” he said. “The surprising thing is that the tourist turned out to be a pro boxer and knocked down the angry shopkeepers one by one.”
