The second home of many British people, Çalış, a seaside resort in Fethiye, is now becoming increasingly known for its local carnival, thanks to the energetic efforts of two British residents. The Çalış Carnival will be held for the third time on May 23. Although the Çalış Society was initially reluctant to support the festival, both it and the area businesses are enthusiastically supporting the festival originated by Chrissie and Peter Clark.

A tornado hit the popular Mediterranean resort town of Alanya on Monday, damaging many houses and greenhouses in the Konakli, Payallar and Emigbeleni villages. The tornado hit a 100-meter-wide, 5-kilometer-long area on Konakli beach.

News reports yesterday morning claiming that a plane had crashed into the sea just off the shore of Antalya’s Alanya district are false according to all preliminary investigations, officials say.

A Turkish court has sentenced a Kurdish man to life in prison for a 2005 attack that left five people dead, including a British and an Irish tourist.The bombing destroyed a minibus in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi. The three other victims were Turks.

A County Londonderry man at the centre of an alleged £2.5m property scam in Turkey is seeking the lifting of an injunction on his assets. Lawyers for Kevin O'Kane confirmed plans to apply for the freezing order to be relaxed to ease the financial burden on his business.

The Bodrum Cup, a four-day sailing race for wooden yachts, ended its 21st year with a surprise winner. The MYS Daima, an unknown outsider at the start of the cup and the first to be built in a new Antalya shipyard, is owned by one of northern Cyprus’ leading businessmen. The boat, skippered by a New Zealand captain and crewed by an all-Turkish crew, carried off the Bodrum Cup, plus a whole bag of prizes.

Turkey is indeed the gateway where two parts of the world meet as exemplified by Bodrum located in the south west of Turkey at the point where the Mediterranean meets the Aegean Sea. A fascinating peninsula with a fabulous coastline presents a unique balance of quaint traditional fishing villages and vibrant, cosmopolitan towns a mixture of old traditions, remnants of ancient history with a rapid expansion of development and modernization of the West.

Coast guard authorities on Tuesday night found the body of 25-year-old Briton Joseph Paul, who had gone missing at sea in Fethiye five days ago.

A north-east couple have survived a white-water rafting accident which left one man dead. Martin Farquhar, 35, and his partner Mary were part of a group rafting on the Dalaman River in Turkey when the raft overturned, killing a Welsh man.

A British girl is at the centre of a horrific holiday scandal with a German teenager accused of sexually abusing her during the families' holidays in Turkey. Marco Weiss, now 19, is accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old British girl while they were both on vacation in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya in 2007. The two teens were spending their Spring holidays with their families at the Side resort. Weiss claims the two became close and developed a holiday romance that has gone horribly wrong. One night the pair ended up in her hotel room where it was alleged there was physical contact but no sex. Weiss claims she told him she was 15, not two years younger.He was arrested the next day, after the mother of the girl filed a complaint against the teen to police. Weiss faces up to eight years in prison if found guilty of sexually abusing a child.

Four people who ran a £6 million travel agency scam were given a total of 18 years in jail at Southwark Crown Court today. Christakis Phillippou, 62, of Bark Place, Bayswater was given 7 years. Evangelina Liogka, 38, of Montpelier Place, Knightsbridge was given 3 and a half years. Timothy Entwisle, 56, of Ludworth, Dorset, was jailed for 3 years. A co-conspirator, Peter Kemp, 52, who  had already pleaded guilty to the same charges was given four and a half years. Thet were found guilty of conspiring to defraud thousands of holidaymakers on February 26.

Britons who travel abroad are often labelled as badly behaved and the reputation of travelling Brits was dealt another blow this week when a teenager from Cumbria exposed himself on a drunken night out. Thomas Strong, 19, not only decided to pull his shorts down in the popular holiday resort of Marmaris but he went on to start swearing at a statue of the nation’s founder. Turkey holds Ataturk in very high regard and he is worshipped as a national hero and if the police had not arrested Strong when they had, it is likely that he would have beaten by locals for his behaviour.

The fall in the British pound against both the US dollar and the euro has made holidays to traditional destinations more expensive for travelers from the UK. As a result, Britons are heading to places where their money can buy a little more, and Turkey has been one beneficiary. The pound is accepted as currency in many places in Turkey, and it also relatively strong against the Turkish lira, so Brits can get some great deals by heading to the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

EasyJet is to start direct flights from London to Bodrum, Turkey. It is thought that the new route will boost Altinkum, Didim, Akbuk Bodrum's property market by making the area more popular and famous for holidays .Easyjet airline's flights will depart from Gatwick Airport and will be the first direct ones between London and Bodrum. EasyJet route, which will start on April 23 and run three times per week. The announcement of new flights is good for the property market in any areas in Turkey and excpected to boost holidays along with property market.

Thousands of XL Leisure Group customers who booked their holidays with the collapsed tour operator were frantically trying to find alternative ways home on Sunday when it became clear that many of them would face high air fares, and additional nights in hotels due to delays of up to a week to return to the UK. When XL Leisure went into administration early last Friday, 85,000 of the company’s customers found themselves stranded overseas. Altinkum Didim Today News

More tourists have come to Kuşadası by sea this year compared to the same term of last year, a local official has said.Kuşadası Port offers one of the most qualified services among all the ports in the world,” Mustafa Esen, local head of Kuşadası, reported.In 2007, 600,00 passengers in 615 ships arrived at the port. We estimate that the number of passengers will exceed 700,00 with 700 ships by the end of this year.Özer Esenkaya, owner of a shipping agency, said ships that dock in Kuşadası are the biggest cruise ships in the Mediterranean. Altinkum Didim Today News

A two year old girl from Tyneside has died after an accident in a swimming pool on a family holiday to Turkey, the Foreign Office has confirmed. A holidaymaker is stranded in Turkey after hotel staff gave her passport to another woman by mistake.Kirstie Alice Willett, aged 20, of Dudley Road, Hillsborough, is in Altinkum but does not yet know how she will get home after another guest at the hotel was given her passport and flew back to Britain without being challenged. A 20 year old student nurse from Co Mayo who has died while in Turkey was on her first foreign holiday.

A van carrying beehives crashed into a lorry yesterday, causing huge swarms to break free and sting the injured and rescue workers who rushed to the scene. All together, about 20 people were taken to hospital: six had been injured in the crash and the rest were rescue workers who had been stung by the bees. One of those injured in the crash near the Turkish holiday resort of Marmaris later died. It was not known if he died from his injuries or as a result of being stung.

Last week, a fire on board a 50m Black Sea yacht Princess Zeyneb, quickly spread into a major disaster. The yacht - moored in Marmaris, Turkey - was in such a position that access by the fire brigade was very difficult, resulting in fire-fighters working hard to stop the fire spreading, rather than putting out the flames on board.

Turkey terror blast victim Helyn Bennett’s family have won £1m in compensation. The 21-year-old was killed on July 16, 2005, when an explosion ripped through a tourist bus in the Turkish seaside resort of Kusadasi. Helyn, who was a trainee chef at the Unive rsity Hospital of North Durham, was one of five killed when bombs were detonated.