police raid - now I have seen everything

Early this morning, a big, burly Turkish plainclothes policeman and his little lackey knocked at our door with a warrant (in Turkish) to search our apartment. The big guy spoke perfect English, but he refused to tell me what was written on the warrant, so I wouldn't let him in. After a long time of standing in the doorway, during which both my foot and the dude's foot were planted against the door (mine to prevent him from coming in and his to prevent me from closing the door), they came in on the grounds that they wanted proof that we work here legally (almost no English teachers do). At no point did we admit to working here, but it was pretty obvious. What else were we doing with an apartment and several tourist visas between us? However, while they were searching our stuff, I noticed that they were looking under our mattresses and in our medication, and I had a hunch they were probably looking for drugs (which we did not have, thank you very much).

While we were still standing in the doorway, the lackey went to fetch our landlady and her husband. Instead of reassuring us, or defending us, they were absolutely terrified and told us to do whatever the policemen asked. I already felt like a child in trouble for something I didn't know I had done; to see two terrified adults who are from this culture made it even worse. Our manager and school owner (whom we phoned) couldn't do anything for us either; we just had to let them humiliate us by searching the place. I know our neighbors had a field day. Later it was translated for us that there had been a "tip" that we had drugs in the house, which was ridiculous. Our school owner emailed us later and said that they were doing a big drug bust on foreigners throughout the city, and we just happened to be caught up in the whole thing. We'll never really know the truth. The fact that we were foreigners made it easy to use the story that they wanted proper documentation, but I think the drug thing is more likely.

The whole incident has been "cleared" by our school owner, and don't ask me how. It has been a long day. Well-deserved cocktails were had at 4pm.

Now I really can't wait to go home.