We continue our round up of the local news from Fethiye, Muğla and surrounding area.

Back to School

On Monday 19th September the new school year began in Fethiye and indeed all over the country, or as local press rather charmingly reported “the lesson bell rang for the first time”.

Local education authorities took advantage of the occasion to issue a press release which stated that 36,000 students were enrolled in local schools and being taught by 3,189 teachers, a number set to rise.

Turkey operates a two semester academic year and this year’s mid-year holiday will run from 20 January to 6 February 2012, with the schools breaking up for the summer on 8 June 2012.

Kaya Fire Extinguished

A forest fire in Kaya was quickly put out by the Forestry Commission’s fire fighters with only around 1,000 sq.m of forest destroyed.

Lost on the Lycian Way

Over the past few years there have been several cases of British citizens getting lost on parts of the Lycian Way and having to be rescued by the specialist rescue teams of AKUT/the Jandarma.

This week it was the turn of a young Turkish couple on holiday from Istanbul, who set out to walk from Kaya to Ölüdeniz around 16.00 in the afternoon, a distance of around 8km.

They were only half way to their destination at 20.00, when it went dark, they got lost in the forest, and had to be rescued by the Jandarma.

The woman, 28-year-old Yasemin Güner, told press the walk turned out to be much longer than they had thought.

The man, 34-year-old Özgür Baltutan, said “The Lycian Way is a beautiful place to walk. However, all walkers should ensure that they take water, a torch, proper footwear, long-sleeved shirt, spare battery for mobile phone and a map. We had hardly any of these.”

But they did have the mobile phones that led to their rescue.

Missing Boy Found Drowned

After an intensive three days of searching around Ören village near Kemer, the body of 12-year-old Emrah Öztürk was found drowned in the Eşen-2 dam.

The search involved AKUT, local Jandarma and military commandos.

Emrah was spotted on a security tape from a camera mounted near the dam, and the search followed the direction he could be seen taking on the film.

His body was eventually found using a dog to follow his final trail to the water.

Fethiye International

Back to school again with the announcement that 10 schools in Fethiye have between them a total of 105 non-Turkish students enrolled for the 2011 – 2012 academic year.

The majority are British but other nationalities are: New Zealand, France, Moldovia, Azerbaijan, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Northern Cyprus.

They all get extra Turkish tuition during their first years at school.