Every day for the last month the amount of misinformation floating around our small town has deepened. Like all closed communities, all events no matter how small, are repeatedly discussed and in the unfolding chinese whisper the facts lose all shape and turgidity. The truth becomes flaccid and far less interesting than the latest rumour. 

Fact: Dalyan has recently experienced some burglaries

Fiction: There have been over one hundred and fifty break-ins in under a month, sometimes five in one night 

Fact: There have been a variety of different types of home burgled

Fiction: Only tourists staying in rental villas have been targetted 

Fact: Some of the criminals (whom have been identified) are local men

Fiction: A mafia gang has found it’s way into Dalyan and professional safe crackers are being employed at each robbery/ alternative theory.....a simple boy who cycles round town all day is the scout for a gang of female thieves who used to be cleaners at the burgled properties 

The local police and gendarmes have been quick to respond to the rather unusual crime wave, as a rule the most serious incident here is the occasional day time snatch via an open window. There have been car and van patrols every night around different parts of town as well foot patrols in civillian clothing. Of course all of this has the local dogs in high dudgeon as they have had to bark extra hard not just at possible prowlers but also at the helpful plods. Ortaca CSİ was called in when the locals found that they were making little headway in their enquiries. They arrived at every incident, looking fresher than the bloodshot local cops who had been up all night doing the rounds, smeared the houses with fingerprint dust and asked some rather telling questions ‘Who knew you had arrived at the house?’ ‘How did you arrive at the house?’ ‘Where were you when the burglary took place?’. İt didn’t take long for us lay people to deduce that there was some transport/ entertainment link involved in some of the crimes – the finger was pointed at taxi drivers and then later particular bar owners.  

As well as investigating the particular incidents our local gendarme tried to heighten awareness of potential crime and criminals and held a conference as well as producing a widely distributed leaflet. The leaflet was notable for the high content of recognisable english and hats off to the gendarme for managing to write and translate two sides of an A4 sheet of tips when most locals struggle to complete a menu board. The missive entitled ‘Precautions against the robbery in the houses’ had some genuinely useful pointers;

13. Don’t forget that if you protect your neighbour’s houses, they will protect your house. Tell on somebody who is doubtful.

19. if there are some flowers, shrubs or trees in your garden; make a point of that they don’t block seeing your doors and windows from outside. Hereby, the chance of burglars’ entering the house secretly will be decreased.

as well as some more obvious ones;

3. When you leave your house for short or long time, without fail lock the doors and windows, make the alarm system in service, if requires set up a camera system and at nights make a lamp on. The entrees of houses and apartments must be shined upon.

8. Be sensitive against the burglars, bundlers, hawwkers who came to your home. Even; if you are staying alone at home, don’t allow them to come in.

and only three that provided comic relief in what was ultimately a stressful situation;

4. The street lamps must be on, if require the related foundations must be warned

5. The inhabitants in house and apartment, the director of apartment and especially doorkeeper must be sensitive against the intrants and resultants in apartment.

10. Burglars firsty weaves the bedrooms. Hide your valuable goods in different places. 

Of course the culprits have been apprehended, unlike the UK Turkish police take these matters seriously and don’t rely on insurance companies to make the necessary restitutions. A general alert was given throuhout the province to all jewellers and six of a gang of eight were caught after they tried to fence jewellery in a city only two hours away. One owns a local bar and another is an employee from a local company carrying out airport transfers. The newspapers reported that there had been ten burglaries rather than the much purported figure of one hundred and fifty.  

Some people though just don’t help themselves, İ went to interview a local doyenne, Mrs B, after she had been burgled and found no one at home when İ knocked on the door. Looking around the house the downstairs toilet window (a sizeable square) was open as were windows and balcony doors upstairs. Assuming they must be inside and perhaps snoozing İ quietly left a note. The next day Mrs B informed me she had been in Fethiye when İ called. Talk about asking for it. Others who have bemoaned their poor luck have made rather questionable errors of judgement like leaving £17,000 cash in the house, telling people they have just met exactly which house they are staying in (with directions supplied) and leaving all their valuables in the dresser by the bed.  

The whole calamitous affair had me seeking new vocabulary to describe the multible thefts. The American ‘burglarise’ seems to show little imagination and less grammar and theft was too bland and all encomapassing. A new collective noun was needed to illustrate both the multitude of incidents and the ridiculous behaviour that led to many of them. After rejecting ‘a terror of burglaries’ as too awe inspiring and a ‘bonanza’ as too favourable to the criminals İ found the perfect word, henceforth our crime wave and others like it will be ‘a blunder of burglaries!’