Village Life in Bodrum - Under Threat?

2014 will see the 11 local councils in the Bodrum area merge into one large municipal council with one mayor overseeing all. As I mentioned before (click here), the candidates have been busy meeting and greeting in all the surrounding villages campaigning for votes. The village I live in has begun to enjoy the benefits of becoming part of an organised municipality.  For the first time ever we have a rubbish collection service,  and the local roads have been covered with tarmac. I am not so easily wooed; being a cynic by nature, I wonder who will repair the roads when the winter rains create the inevitable pot holes in the very thin asphalt.  (I secretly hope that no one does, as  I resent the cars speeding along what has always been  a quiet track at the bottom of our garden).

Our first official rubbish collection.

So all was going swingingly as computers and wheelchairs were being handed out to housebound villagers as the press photographers snapped the generous benefactors and grateful recipients.
Then the first official letters were received by the muhtars (village mayors), stating that as their villages are being incorporated into a municipality, their village status is to be "upgraded" to mahalle (district within a town) and as such, all chicken coups and animal barns have to be relocated to an area outside the residential zone. Whoops! Suddenly these local politicians aren't being looked on so favourably by your average villager who keeps a dozen chickens in his yard along side a couple of cows and goats.  The mayor of Bodrum, Mehmet Kocadon has tried to calm the situation by saying that his officials have no choice but to send out the letters as the law banning animal husbandry in towns has been on the books since 1930, but that he will be appealing to Ankara to think again on these restrictions.    Having already been told in the last 12 months that they can't sow the seeds they choose or plant any more olive trees this year, this new blow to village life is not going to be accepted quietly.  All in all, 2014 is going to be a very interesting year in Turkey.