Our weekly roundup the local news continues.

International Conference Attracts Participants from 12 Countries

This week Fethiye hosted an academic conference focused on endangered and endemic plants in Turkey.

Based at the Tuana Majesty Club in Yanıklar the conference welcomed 200 participants from 12 countries.

The conference lasted three days and each day focused on a different topic: ‘Saving the sığla’; ‘Bio-information’; ‘Tourism and the protection of biodiversity’.

Watchdog at Council

Nationwide a total of 500 local councils are being audited by the Turkish Ministry of the Interior and, you guessed it, one of them is Fethiye.

The audit is already underway and will take three months in total.

Fethiye Council last underwent external audit in 2006.

Attacker Flees to School

And drama this week when a 25-year-old man started an argument with an off-duty night watchman at a bus stop.

A crowd gathered to watch the argument when the young man suddenly stabbed the night watchman.

The crowd then ganged up on the attacker but he ran off and sought sanctuary in a nearby school.

Police arrived, bundled him into a van and drove off through the crowd.

What a Blast!

Even more drama in the small village of Söğüt near Üzümlü when a large rock came through the roof of a house.

Workmen were using dynamite to widen the road when a large chunk of rock hit the roof of a two-storey house and fell down into the kitchen on the ground floor.

Illegal Immigrants Caught

Ever spent a day out at the beautiful Katrancı Bay?

Well this week no less than 86 people, including 19 women and 8 children, were caught at Katrancı trying to board a boat which would smuggle them across to Greece.

And what a United Nations they turned out to be comprising: 31 Afghanis, 8 Iranians, 21 Turks, 21 Palestinians, 2 Iraqis, 2 Burmese and 1 Pakistani.

One of the women was pregnant and as yet the reports are not telling us what happened next, except they were brought into Fethiye on a Coast Guard boat.

Some of them went to the State Hospital for examination and others were taken to the Jandarma HQ for questioning.

Change in Governor

To end on a lighter note the Governor of Muğla moved on to be Governor of Antalya this week and his replacement will start work in Muğla on Monday 31st May.

As regular readers know, this writer loves translating Turkish surnames and has accordingly sometimes referred to the outgoing Governor as ‘Mr Sixfingers’ because his surname was ‘Altıparmak’ which literally means ‘six fingers’ in Turkish.

His replacement is Fatih Şahin – and both of those names can be translated.

‘Fatih’ means ‘conqueror’ whilst ‘şahin’ is a ‘Peregrine Falcon’.

So we may have lost the excellent services of Mr. Sixfingers but instead we get the ‘Conquering Falcon’.