Kırklareli

The 114th edition of one of Türkiye's oldest fairs has kicked off in the northwestern province of Kırklareli's Pehlivanköy district.

Originally established as an animal marketplace during the Ottoman era, Pavli Fair evolved into a festival-like event in subsequent years, hosting entertainment and providing for the basic necessities of the local populace.

A bus with Bulgarian registration veered off its path, resulting in 11 injuries, two of which are reported to be severe. The incident occurred near the town of Kavaklı in the province of Kirklareli, where the bus lost control, colliding with a tree before overturning.

Citizens in the Thracian province of Kırklareli celebrated the thousand-year-old Balkan tradition of "Koleda," a kind of Balkan Halloween believed to expel evil spirits.

Many people came together in the Büyükmandıra town of Babaeski district for the tradition, which is celebrated on the coldest days of winter with different names in various parts of Thrace.

While Türkiye spent the last two months of 2023 with temperatures above seasonal norms, experts have announced that the trend will not continue in the first month of the year, and cold temperatures and snowfall will prevail across the country from mid-January.

With light rains witnessed on the first day of the new year, experts predict the occurrence of intermittent precipitation across the country for the coming week.

In Greece, they expect the unprecedented bad weather to begin to subside today. The floods in the country claimed three lives. Turkey reported seven dead.

In the area of the Black Sea resort of Ineada in the district of Kirklareli bordering Bulgaria, rivers overflowed and many bungalows and caravans were swept into the sea. Five of the victims are in this area, two are in Istanbul.

Fierce rainstorms battered on Tuesday, triggering flooding that caused at least five deaths, including two holidaymakers swept away by a torrent that raged through a campsite in northwestern Türkiye.

With the summer season at its peak, the problem of drought in the country has come to the fore once again as the water level of three major dams meeting the water needs of Istanbul has dropped by 5 percent, with one of them almost completely covered with grass.

The average home price in Türkiye was 2.3 million Turkish liras (around $119,000) in March, according to Endeksa, which collects data on the real estate market.

Home prices have been on the rise due to the increased construction costs and the imbalance between supply and demand in the housing market.

Koleda, 1,000-year-old tradition of the Balkans, has been celebrated in a village of the northwestern province of Kırklareli's Babaeski district, with villagers wearing strange clothes frightening people by knocking on the windows of their houses.

The horror nights are held under different names by people in various settlements of Thrace in the coldest days of winter.