The most dangerous Turkish barbers in Britain

They’ve spread across our high streets at astonishing speed – but some of Britain’s Turkish-style barber shops are hiding a troubling reality.

The art of delivering a good haircut using advanced scissor skills and cut throat razors is a time-honoured tradition originating in the Ottoman Empire. 

And while most barber shops are entirely legitimate businesses, a worrying number are anything but.

Police have linked barber shops to a wide range of crimes, from drug dealing and money laundering to human trafficking.

Others have been locked in vicious turf wars with rivals, leading to bloody street brawls – and even a murder.

Here are the most dangerous barber shops in Britain – 

Marmaris Barbers, Blackwood, South Wales 

Located halfway along the high street of Blackwood, a quiet market town in the Welsh valleys, Marmaris Barbers looks entirely unremarkable. 

But last year, the pavement outside the shop was the site of a mass brawl that left a man with a fractured skull.

The violence broke out after Marmaris employee Omed Pirot, 31, announced that he planned to open a store in the nearby town of Newbridge.

This angered the staff of Kurds Barbers, who jumped into four cars and drove to Blackwood.

Employees of Marmaris rushed out onto the street to confront them, sparking a frenzied fight in which scissors and spanners were used as makeshift weapons.

The brawl, which involved as many as 25 men in total, took place in front of terrified local shoppers at just before 3pm on February 13, 2025.

One man was left with a one-inch stab wound to his back, while Pirot had his skull shattered after being hit with a knuckle-duster.

Like many men running barber shops with ‘Turkish’ in the name, Pirot was not actually from Turkey – but Iran.

He claimed to have been defending himself from an attack. But he was found guilty earlier this month of affray alongside his 26-year-old colleague Shabab Husseini after prosecutors argued they were willing participants in the violence.

Five other men from Kurd Barbers had already admitted affray, and all seven will be sentenced next month.

HB Barbers and K Barbers in Hove  

The brawl in Blackwood appears to have been motivated by straightforward competition for customers, but the background to a separate dispute that unfolded in Hove – the trendy neighbour of Brighton – is far murkier.

There, tensions had been simmering between a group of men from K Barbers and those from HB Barbers, which sits diagonally opposite.

On April 2, 2024, the long-running dispute erupted into violence, with men affiliated with both shops seen battering each other with weapons including a knife, a tyre iron and wooden clubs.

Two men were left in a critical condition, with one man suffering a 25cm-long cut to his arm and a stab wound that went to the bone.

Three Kurdish Iraqis from K Barbers – Ayob Mohammed, 21, Sarbast Ibrahimi, 25, and Sardam Qadir, 31 – were later jailed for violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon.

Brighton Crown Court heard Mohammed – the shop’s owner – had been in a dispute with Hogr Banaee, founder of HB Barbers, with the Iranian once threatening in a phone call to ‘cut his legs off’.

Prosecutors said there had been ‘bad blood’ between the men but did not give any more detail, prompting locals to speculate that their dispute may have been about more than simple competition for haircuts.

Today H&B Barbers is still operating from the same premises on the crossroads but has changed its name to Bamo 1 Barber. K Gentleman Barbers is located just 20 metres away.

There are several other barbers in the vicinity, but when the Daily Mail visited on a Friday morning, some were closed, with neighbouring businesses saying they kept sporadic hours.

SR Barbers in Somercotes, Derbyshire  

While brutal in themselves, the brawls in Blackwood and Hove pale in comparison to the violence seen in the village of Somercotes in Derbyshire.

On November 25, 2021, residents woke to the sound of a fight outside a local Co-op.

Peshang Sleman, a worker at SR Barbers half a mile along the High Street, had been stabbed to death and his brother, Ibrahim Takmary, was left seriously injured.

A court later heard the men had been locked in a dispute with another shop, Pro Barbers, which was directly opposite the Co-op.

Herish Zandi, who lived locally and worked at Pro Barbers, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after admitting to inflicting a fatal stab wound to Mr Slemen’s heart and was jailed for nine years.

But the victim’s family were left furious, claiming he was covering for the real killer.

Two other men, Danyaal Panah – from Nottingham – and Sam Mohazeri, who lived in Surrey, admitted lesser charges of violent disorder and were each jailed for two years and 11 months. All those involved were Kurdish. 

Once again, limited information was shared in court about the nature of the dispute. Was it merely a question of barbers squabbling over customers?

Sarah Linacre, a 52-year-old who was working at the Co-op at the time, is sceptical, noting that two of the men jailed over the attack lived elsewhere in the country.

‘It does make you wonder why they should travel so far from their home towns to open a barber shop in a small village,’ she said.

Traditional Barbers, Camden, North London  

In other cases, specific barber shops have been found to have clear links to organised crime.

They include Traditional Barbers, a shop in Camden, North London owned by Hewa Rahimpur.

While the Iranian posed as a legitimate business owner, he was actually a major people trafficker who helped bring 10,000 migrants into Dover from the French coast on small boats.

The 32-year-old, who had arrived in the UK illegally and was granted asylum after claiming to have suffered ‘political oppression’ in his home country, was driving a top-of-the-range Mercedes when he was arrested by police in 2022.

His gang had netted £13million in cash from the crossings and it needed to be laundered somehow, so Rahimpur, a former barber, reentered the hairstyling business. 

He was extradited from the UK to stand trial in Belgium in 2024 and is now serving an 11-year sentence for people-trafficking.

Boss Crew Barbers, Hammersmith, West London 

Some salons have also been linked to terrorism, including Boss Crew Barbers in Hammersmith, West London.

The shop was owned by Tarek Namouz, who claimed coronavirus relief grants from Hammersmith and Fulham Council during the pandemic.

However, he sent the funds via a money transfer bureau to ISIS supporters in Syria.

Police identified transfers totalling about £11,280 but Namouz boasted to a friend during a prison visit he had also sent £25,000 to Yahya Ahmed Alia, who he described as an ‘ex-fighter with Islamic State’ who could buy sniper rifles for £2,500.

Namouz denied knowing the money would be used for terrorism, telling police he sent the funds to ‘help… the poor and needy in Syria’.

But in 2023, he was found guilty of eight counts of entering into a funding arrangement for terrorism between November 2020 and May 2021.