Izmir

A total of eight players from 1207 Antalya Muratpa?a Belediyespor, a Turkish women's first league football team in the Mediterranean province of Antalya, are sharing the same house as they sweat over their team's success on the green pitch.

Aegean province ?zmir's Selçuk district, home to the House of the Virgin Mary, which is a pilgrimage site for Christians, will soon have a massive statue of the mother of Jesus. 

Speaking at a tourism conference, Selçuk Mayor Zeynel Bak?c? said they had rolled up their sleeves for the construction of the structure. 

At least 33 people have drowned after two boats carrying refuges and migrants, including many children, capsized in the Aegean Sea.

Anadolu and Dogan news agencies reported that 22 people died close to the Greek island of Lesvos.

As a Turkish official told Reuters, the people on the boats were trying to reach a Greek island.

At least 24 migrants, including 11 children, were killed when a boat bound for the Greek island of Lesbos capsized off Turkey's Edremit Bay on Feb. 8, with the boat reportedly charting a different course due to intensified security measures to prevent migrant crossings.

Nine migrants, including two children, died when their boat sank off Turkey's Aegean coast on Feb. 2.

Security forces were informed about migrants on the Seferihisar shore of ?zmir province. Eleven migrants who were waiting on the shore said the fiber boat sank due to the waves.

At least 12 migrants died while 28 others were rescued in the Aegean Sea on Jan. 21 after their boat capsized off the Foça district in the Western province of ?zmir, according to Anadolu Agency reports.

The Turkish Coast Guard rescued 28 migrants, including women and children, off the Aslanburnu coast in Foça, bound for the Greek island of Lesbos.

Seven migrants were found dead after washing up on the shore of the western Turkish province of ?zmir late on Jan. 13.

Local people found six bodies in the Seferihisar district before calling the Turkish gendarmerie. Local security forces at the scene confirmed that the six people had drowned.        

Human traffickers are changing their illegal trafficking routes to Europe depending on the density of the controls on the Aegean coasts, where 96 percent of all illegal passages to Europe are being done. 

Human traffickers prefer the suitable bays and beaches of Turkey's Aegean coast when sending hundreds of migrants to Greek islands in inflatable boats.

Turkish police have seized over 1,200 unsafe life jackets destined for use by migrants trying to reach Greece by sea, in a raid on an underground workshop that used Syrian underage labor on Jan. 6.

The authorities seized 1,263 life jackets that failed to correspond to safety standards in the raid on the workshop in the center of ?zmir, Do?an News Agency said.

For the first time since the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, a Greek Orthodox Epiphany celebration took place in Izmir on January 6, 2016.

The Greek Orthodox community has received permission from the Turkish authorities to perform the Diving for the Holy Cross ceremony on the local pier.