Şanlıurfa Edition: Cotton Smother; Wedding Vapor

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 20 October 2017)


Invitingly comfortable-looking cotton pile-cum-nightmare.

The night before last, brothers Ali (12) and Harun Tekdağ (14) and
their cousin Hüseyin Tekdağ, all of Ulucanlar village in Eyyübiye
district of Şanlıurfa, went to a field in the Gözeler quarter where cotton
is harvested. 

The three boys lay down on a pile of cotton and covered themselves
with it to sleep in the cool night air.  But when the boys did not return
home later in the night their parents looked for them and found their
three bodies among the cotton pile.  The Şanlıurfa public prosecutor
issued a preliminary cause of death as smothering but the Istanbul
forensics lab will do autopsies to determine the definite cause of death.

Ulucanlar village chief Mahmut Alkan said that "the children may have
died from smothering under the cotton but it may also be that they died
because of the agricultural pesticides."  Relative Mehmet Tektaş stated
that "they lay down in cotton treated with pesticides.  Later, a tractor
dumped another ton of cotton on them as they slept." 

Prof. Dr. Saadettin Gürsöz of Harran University's Agriculture Faculty
opined that "agricultural pesticides have an effect for 48 hours or
perhaps as long as a week.  After a long while it loses its killing effect."

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türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Sözcü Newspaper, 20 October 2017)


The engaged happy (!) couple.  Oh, what might have been...

Satılmış Gökhasan and his son Tahsin (29) live in Afyonkarahisar. 
They found a bride for Tahsin from a family in Şanlıurfa and rented a
house there, where Tahsin and Nur D. (20) were engaged.  Then,
Tahsin and his father returned to Afyonkarahisar after paying Nur D.'s
family 50,000 TL (about $15,000) as a 'bride price'.

Wedding invitations were printed and the marriage was scheduled
for 13 October.  However, Nur D.'s family claimed there had been a
death in the family so they wanted the wedding postponed.  When
the family didn't answer calls from the Gökhasan's, father and son
went back to Şanlıurfa only to find the engagement house empty.

The Gökhasan family has filed a fraud complaint against Nur. D.'s
family.  Meanwhile, Tahsin said that "after this bilking incident I'll
never get married.  They have crushed my dreams."