Today an earthquake hit the Mersin province. I didn’t consciously feel anything but the other staff members did and they, as people are told to do when an earthquake hits, walked to the front door whilst I kept working. Thankfully, no injuries or damage have been reported.

The biggest news in Turkey of the past month has been the new penal code brought in to help satisfy the requirements to start EU accession talks. The original bill tabled in parliament included criminalising adultery. Thankfully, the EU and many different people and groups in Turkey saw this as ridiculous and the bill was withdrawn. In an emergency sitting of parliament on Sunday, a new bill, free of the adultery clause, was passed.

An interesting related story is on the BBC website.

Another article on Turkey’s potential EU accession was in The Australian. This article includes the thoughts of a person from Silifke and one from Mersin.

A few good Google search rankings for this website recently:

a) 1st out 1,410,000 results for ‘how’ ‘many’ ‘people’ ‘live’ ‘in’ ‘Turkey’

b) 2nd out of 2,600,000 results for ‘brother’ ‘joe’