http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/national-geographic-exposes-tourist-scam-in-turkey-.aspx?pageID=238&nid=35644&NewsCatID=349

Please be careful and don´t go anywhere with someone you don´t know. Don´t drink and eat anything without asking their prices. Get information about trusted places from your friends or from internet.

And I thought 15TL for a beer was excessive. 1500 TL is unbelievable, but if you don´t look at your credit card slip carefully, or assume 1500 is 15.00, then you will have problems. 

Like you should do everywhere, always check your change in front of the cashier after handing over larger notes. I was short-changed the other day, but if you leave the shop, and then check your change, it´s too late. I do it in Australia, but I was in a hurry in Istanbul, and was caught out. I assume it was an accident by the cashier, which can happen anytime. I´ve learnt my lesson. 

The problem here is they really want 1500 TL from you for two beers in some bars in Turkey. Somebody comes when you wander around on the street and he says you that he knows a good place to drink something. And if you accept to accompany him, he takes you to one of bars which he has an agreement with before, then after you drink a few beers he disappears and the personnel in the bar force you to pay 1500 TL. In short they rob you using force.That is so sick and barbaric. Sometimes I hate my humanity when I read this kind of news.

It is a shame that some tourists louse their senses when on vacation.  If you go visit them in their country they are probably the fisrt to say don´t go there it is a tourist trap or avoid such and such a place because they will scam you. 

You have to be alert and pay attention or else you will get sucked in, if I would have listened to all the cute Turkish guys that said come visite my art gallery I would probably have enought Turkish carpets to cover the whole village where I was born

In general, buisnesses that do their living from the tourist population are honest because their reputation is based on word of mouth from one tourist to another but yes there are exceptions.

Like the saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

And if you are gullible enough to follow a perfect stranger that says, hey I know a place to have a good beer then maybe you should pay 1500TL for 2 beers, I should know, it cost me 10TL for 2 cups of Lipton tea, not even real Turkish çay, in Marmaris,  it was not 1500TL but still, fool me once not twice