Fethiye will be without the traditional Ramazan drummers this year. But why?

In case any local readers in Fethiye have been wondering what has happened to the Ramazan drummers, we can now reveal that there won't be any this year.

In the past the drummers had to apply to Fethiye Council for permission to play and, as many readers will know, they eventually knock on your door, wanting payment for the middle of the night drumming.

While the whole thing is clearly alien to non-Turkish residents of Fethiye it would seem the Turks were also unhappy with the often rapacious drummers.

The Council decided to ban drumming following 'numerous' complaints from local Turks about the unreliability of the drummers (in other words they turned up at wildly different times in the night), about their heavy-handed techniques when asking for money and finally, this is our favourite, the fact that most of them couldn't actually play the drum properly.

This year wannabe drummers who applied for licences to play in Ramazan were turned away and, clever Council, the lack of drummers was only announced after Ramazan had begun – so the drummers and their supporters couldn't protest the ban early.

So we hope you are all sleeping soundly in Ramazan – what a change.