DUBAI: International accommodation sharing service Airbnb has apologized to two British travelers after a dawn raid on their rented apartment in Istanbul saw them face police interrogation.
The police officers reportedly entered the apartment – and left the tourists stranded afterwards – in a dispute over whether the US-based company had the right to let out the property.
Speaking to The Times on Tuesday, guest Tom Duggan, 36, from London, said: “We were pretty shaken by the whole experience… We woke to very loud banging on the door. Seven policemen briefly showed us their IDs and then took away our passports. They questioned us for over an hour about the purpose of our visit and to provide evidence that we were allowed to be in the apartment. We were really worried.
“They tried to contact the apartment owner but he wouldn’t answer their calls even though he’d been regularly in touch with us by text over the weekend. Eventually they explained that the owner was renting the apartment illegally and either that he wasn’t paying tax or hadn’t registered it. They made us sign a page-long document in Turkish, which they told us said how many days we’d booked it for and how much we paid, but we didn’t know for sure. Only then would they release our passports.
“The officers then gave us ten minutes to pack and leave before they sealed the apartment.”
When the pair returned to the UK, they were reportedly refused a full refund by Airbnb, however, The Times reported that the company eventually offered a full refund and apology.
A spokesman said: “We have apologized to the guests and are giving them our support. We have also suspended the host while we investigate further.”
‘Shaken’ UK tourists face dawn raid on Airbnb flat by Turkish police
‘Shaken’ UK tourists face dawn raid on Airbnb flat by Turkish police
South Korea will boost medical school admissions to tackle physician shortage
- Jeong said all of the additional students will be trained through regional physician programs
SEOUL: South Korea plans to increase medical school admissions by more than 3,340 students from 2027 to 2031 to address concerns about physician shortages in one of the fastest-aging countries in the world, the government said Tuesday.
The decision was announced months after officials defused a prolonged doctors’ strike by backing away from a more ambitious increase pursued by Seoul’s former conservative government. Even the scaled-down plan drew criticism from the country’s doctors’ lobby, which said the move was “devoid of rational judgment.”
Kwak Soon-hun, a senior Health Ministry official, said that the president of the Korean Medical Association attended the healthcare policy meeting but left early to boycott the vote confirming the size of the admission increases.
The KMA president, Kim Taek-woo, later said the increases would overwhelm medical schools when combined with students returning from strikes or mandatory military service, and warned that the government would be “fully responsible for all confusion that emerges in the medical sector going forward.” The group didn’t immediately signal plans for further walkouts.
Health Minister Jeong Eun Kyeong said the annual medical school admissions cap will increase from the current 3,058 to 3,548 in 2027, with further hikes planned in subsequent years to reach 3,871 by 2031. This represents an average increase of 668 students per year over the five-year period, far smaller than the 2,000-per-year hike initially proposed by the government of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, which sparked the months long strike by thousands of doctors.
Jeong said all of the additional students will be trained through regional physician programs, which aim to increase the number of doctors in small towns and rural areas that have been hit hardest by demographic pressures. The specific admissions quota for each medical school will be finalized in April.
