We continue our round up of the week’s local news from the Fethiye area.

Fight to Save School

The school in Kayaköy, which teaches only years 1, 2 and 3 now has a mere 9 pupils and one teacher, is threatened with closure due to lack of numbers.

Locals are now organising themselves to fight off this threat, which reminds us of village life in the UK.

It All Goes on In Kaya!

You know it’s a slow week for news when local press announce that an owl nesting in a plane tree in Kayaköy is of great interest to villagers.

Apparently the owl belongs to an endangered species (but it isn’t specified) and spends nine months of the year in the plane tree and the other three months up in the yayla (the mountain area).

So there you go!

Tragic Death

Halil Ercan, a 74-year-old who lived in Çoban village up on the yayla, set out to walk to Bekçiler village to visit friends. He never arrived.

After five days of searching his body was found trapped in the barbed wire fence around a field.

It is presumed he got tangled in the wire, couldn’t release himself, and then died of hypothermia during the night

Calls to Ease Way for Sea Tourists

The Chair of the Association for Sea Tourism, Ali Erkan Bezirgan, who is also General Manager of the huge D-Marin yacht marina near Bodrum, held a press conference this week to call for simplification of the paperwork needed by yachts entering the country.

At the moment any yacht coming into Turkey from foreign waters has to go through five separate sets of bureaucracy: passport control, harbour master, two lots of Customs control and a health check.

Mr Bezirgan wisely states that more yachts would come to Turkey if all of these could be simplified into one.

The voice of reason, in our experience, does not get you very far here. But we do admire him for trying.

Deja Vu? No, Just Good Timing

On Saturday the ski centre up near Seki was officially opened by Muğla’s Governor.

But we thought the old Governor did that last winter just before he left to become Governor of Antalya?

Then we remembered it's because the Universiade Winter Games will be hosted in Erzurzum, Turkey next week so it was a good opportunity to show Muğla is doing its thing.

Birthday Parade Fethiye Style

Finally the Mayor celebrated his 54th birthday this week and did it in style!

The day coincided with the delivery of 16 new vehicles for use by various departments of the Council, so they were driven slowly around the town with the Mayor in the new bus cutting his cake!

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