An 80-year-old woman in Turkey risks spending over 4 years behind bars for hitting her 18-year-old granddaughter on the arm with a house slipper during an argument.

Asiye Kaytan lives with her granddaughter, Vural, in the Topraklık neighborhood of Denizli, in Southwestern Turkey. Ever since the girl’s parents split up, the 80-year-old woman has been trying to protect her, sometimes even from herself. Last year, on August 9th, after Vural came back from work, she told her grandmother that she was going out with some friends. Fearing for her safety, the old woman said she wouldn’t allow it and even locked the door to make sure Vural couldn’t go out. At one point during their argument, the young woman tried to unlock the door, and Kaytan grabbed one of her house slippers and slapped her on the arm with it. Vural instinctively retaliated by hitting her grandmother on the head with her phone. Kaytan started bleeding, and the frightened girl forgot all about partying and called an ambulance. Little did they know that what started as a family feud would eventually turn into an international news story.

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Turkish police recently arrested a network of scammers who preyed on people’s desire to get rich quickly by selling them fake treasure maps and charging them extra to help them sell the “priceless” loot.

As part of a complex operation conducted in 9 Turkish provinces, dozens of con artists collaborated to defraud unwitting victims of more than 50 million Turkish lira ($1.3 million) using fake treasure maps. The suspects reportedly traveled around rural areas of the country, showing hand-drawn treasure maps on artificially aged pieces of paper to villagers looking to get rich overnight. The maps were very detailed and featured nearby locations that the victims were familiar with, unlike the scammers, who claimed to be from far away. As they had problems navigating the area to reach the treasure, they offered to sell their maps for a fee. But this was only half of their admittedly witty scam.

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Efecan Kultur, a Turkish Tiktoker who rose to prominence for his “mukbang” binge eating streams, tragically lost his life at the age of 24 due to obesity-related health complications.

The “mukbang” trend, in which people costume copious amounts of food on camera to the delight of their fans, originated in South Korea but quickly spread all over the world raising concerns about obesity and mindless food waste. With more than 156,000 TikTok followers and 12,000 Instagram followers, 24-year-old Efecan Kultur was one of Turkey’s most popular mukbang streamers, but his popularity came at a cost. As he continued ballooning in size, he started experiencing various health problems, including heart disease, and in October of last year, he announced that he would be going on a diet and avoiding extra salt to try and lose weight. Sadly, earlier this month, the 24-year-old died as a result of his obesity.

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A Turkish man who lost his home to a massive earthquake in 2023 has been living alone in a small cave for two years because he considers it safer than any man-made structure.

In February 2023, Southern Turkey was rocked by a Mw 7.8 earthquake that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and turned entire neighborhoods into rubble. Ali Bozoğlan, a father of three from the southern province of Hatay, lost his home to the February 6th earthquake and its aftershocks. Even though he and his family survived unscathed, Ali became so terrified of earthquakes that he decided he didn’t want to live in a man-made building anymore. Instead, he found a small and peaceful cave on the outskirts of his city and turned it into a cozy home. Although unable to convince his family to join him in his unusual home, Ali claims he is happy and at peace.

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A veterinary clinic in Turkey recently shared the touching story of a stray dog who carried her unconscious puppy in her mouth and left it at the clinic door as if begging for help.

If not for the viral video footage captured by CCTV cameras, most people would probably think this story too heartwarming to be true. A vet clinic in the Adnan Kahveci neighborhood of Beylikduzu, in Turkey’s Istanbul Province, recently reported one of its most incredible cases. On January 13, an animal lover brought a young puppy they had found on the street, claiming it was the only survivor of a stray’s litter. The clinic rushed to treat the pup only to then have its mother show up on the doorstep with another unconscious puppy in its mouth. A technician noticed the desperate animal and rushed to tend to its offspring, which suffered from hypothermia and had a very low heart rate.

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A Turkish university candidate was recently arrested after being caught using an AI-powered system to obtain answers to the entrance exam in real-time.

On June 8th, thousands of high school graduates took the Basic Proficiency Test (TYT), the first session of the Higher Education Institutions Examination (YKS) in Isparta, but one incident made international news headlines. One candidate, referred to only by the initials M.E.E. by Turkish media, was reportedly caught cheating using an ingenious system involving an internet connection, a concealed camera, and an AI-powered software that could read the questions on the test and provide answers in real-time. Unfortunately, the man’s behavior during the test attracted the supervisors’ attention and upon closer inspection, his cheating method was discovered.

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An Istanbul-based plastic surgery clinic has been drawing a lot of attention for taking to social media with before-and-after photos that show improvements so radical that experts have deemed them impossible to achieve.

The Este Med Clinic took the internet by storm last week with a before-and-after photo of a patient referred to only as Michael. The after photo showed the man at least a couple of decades younger, his wrinkled skin now as tight as a youngster’s, a full head of hair, and a perfectly sculpted nose. Michael looked so good in his ‘after’ photo posted on Instagram that some users wondered if the clinic had simply put him in a time machine. Had the two photos not been posted together, most people would never have guessed they were of the same person. But this was only the beginning, as a look at Este Med’s Instagram profile showed dozens of other incredible transformations that even plastic surgery experts found hard to believe.

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A 40-year-old Turkish man can consider himself lucky to be alive after having a dental implant screw pushed all the way into his brain cavity by an overzealous dentist.

Ramazan Yilmaz went to a private dental clinic in his home city of Bursa, Turkey, after experiencing serious dental pain. After examining him, the dentist there informed the man that he had loose teeth and a delicate bone structure and that the best solution was to take out his natural teeth and replace them with implants. Trusting the opinion of the expert, Yilmaz agreed to the cost of the dental procedure and to have some of his teeth removed on that very same day. But things started going south from there. First, he heard the doctor, referred to only as A.D. by Turkish media, telling his assistant that the tool used to insert the implant screws into the bone wasn’t working properly, and then he had to endure the pain of having the screws inserted manually by the physician.

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An unknown person believed to be a scorned ex-boyfriend placed over 50 food orders at multiple restaurants in Izmir, Turkey, and sent them all to the same address.

The incident took place last week, at around 9:00 pm, when over two dozen couriers showed up in front of an apartment building on Çimen Street, in Izmir’s Balçova district. The unusual gathering was captured on video by passers-by and the clips shared on Turkish social media quickly went viral. It wasn’t long before the press got involved and started investigating the story. It turns out that a person took advantage of Turkish food delivery app Yemeksepeti‘s cash-on-delivery option to place several orders under fake names and send them all to the same address.

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Stretching for 65 miles (105 km) between the towns of Of and Bayburt in Eastern Turkey, the D915 is an extreme road regarded by many motorists as the most diffcult in the world.

For many years, Bolivia’s Yungas Road, aka the “Death Road”, held the unofficial title of world’s most dangerous road. Photos and videos of motorists navigating the gravel track winding its way through the Cordillera Oriental mountain range to an altitude of 4650 meters have made Yungas one of Bolivia’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing around 25,000 people every year. However, according to some adventurers, there is one less popular road that surpasses the Death Road in terms of difficulty. Linking Turkey’s Northeast Anatolia Province to the Black Sea, the D915 mountain road features a myriad turns and dangerous drop-offs that make it extremely perilous to traverse even for the most skilled drivers.

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A woman recently tried to sneak out of a private hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, hours after undergoing plastic surgery in order to avoid having to pay for the procedure.

The incident reportedly took place last week at a private hospital in Istanbul’s Sisli neighborhood and was captured on camera by passers-by. In a short clip that has been doing the rounds online, a woman wearing a hospital robe and white slippers can be seen arguing with doctors and nurses trying to stop her from leaving. The woman’s face is visibly swollen and almost completely covered in bandages, which makes sense when considering she had only undergone extensive plastic surgery just hours prior. What makes less sense is the woman’s motives for leaving her hospital bed as soon as her anesthesia wore off – trying to avoid covering the bill for the procedure.

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A Turkish woman recently filed a lawsuit against her husband, claiming that he rarely showered, smelled of sweat, and brushed his teeth only once or twice per week.

The woman, identified only as A.Y. by Turkish news media, filed for divorce from her husband, C.Y., citing his lack of personal hygiene as the main reason. The plaintiff’s lawyer told the 19th Family Court in Ankara that the defendant wore the same clothes for at least 5 days in a row, rarely showered, and constantly reeked of sweat. Witnesses were brought in to confirm these claims, including mutual acquaintances and even some of the husband’s co-workers. They all gave statements confirming the defendant’s poor personal hygiene. The court approved the woman’s request for a divorce and also ordered the husband to pay her 500,000 Turkish lira ($16,500) as compensation to his now-former spouse for putting up with his lack of personal hygiene.

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A Turkish man is suing the doctor he paid for a penis enlargement procedure after his sexual organ allegedly shrunk by one centimeter following the botched operation.

İlter Türkmen, a wealthy banker from Tekirdağ, Turkey is seeking 500,000 lira ($16,500) in compensation from Dr. Haluk Soylemez, the man who was supposed to help him enlarge his penis in both length and girth, but ultimately caused it to shrink. Türkmen claims that the doctor promised him an extra 3 cm (1.1 inches) in both length and girth, but after two botched procedures, he ended up with one less centimeter than he originally had. The banker’s lawyers told a judge of the 1st Civil Court of First Instance that he had to endure excruciating pain that left him unable to walk properly for a month and was left with a shorter, severely scarred sexual organ.

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A Turkish man had to endure over a month of excruciating pain after he had four of his front teeth extracted by a cleaner posing as a dentist at a clinic in Istanbul.

According to documents relating to a recently resolved case filed with the Istanbul Civil Court, 42-year-old Hakan Yıldırım, an Istanbul man suffering from a severe toothache, called a dental clinic in the Kağıthane district to make an emergency appointment. His call was answered by Cemal Şenaslan, who introduced himself as a dentist and told Hakan to come by the clinic in the evening to have his dental problem examined and hopefully resolved. When the patient turned up at the clinic later that day, he was greeted by Şenaslan, who bragged about being a lecturer at a dentistry university, to make Yıldırım feel more comfortable. Little did the poor man know he would soon endure the most painful experience of his life…

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A 20-year-old woman in Turkey has been arrested after it was revealed that she worked as a doctor in a public hospital, despite having never studied medicine.

Ayşe Özkiraz’s family had always wanted her to become a doctor, so after graduating high school she took the medical school exam but failed. But she didn’t want to let her folks down, so instead of admitting her failure and moving on, she told them that she had gotten into the prestigious Capa Medical University and hat she was studying to become a doctor. She even faked her exam score and her enrollment papers so that her parents wouldn’t suspect anything, but this was only the beginning of her farse…

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