Calis Beach and Fethiye Turkey Discussion Forum
Calis Beach Forum => Calis Beach Questions and Information => Topic started by: Tiff on June 30, 2013, 16:29:38 PM
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All CBF readers please note .
We were broken into last week during the night while we were sitting at the back of the house .We had visitors and we had been out for the evening. On our return we 3 ladies took our handbags upstairs to our rooms and returned outside.We cannot understand how the thief / thieves entered the property as we closed and locked the front of the house on arrival. Only money was taken , (typically we had just been to a cashpoint in the evening in Fethiye !) All credit cards and passports were left intact. The handbags were carefully closed so we didnt notice the money had gone until the morning. Our burglar alarm had gone off out of the blue in the middle of the afternoon a few days prior to this , while we were out, which might have been someone making a rekky .Our neighbours were at home and came to check and the security company called the police who could find nothing out of the ordinary .
The following day our neigbours noticed a dark coloured car cruising up and down our road giving every property a good look over, and once he stood up and stared at them , and they saw him on his balcony they moved on.
We have also had 2 men posing as a charity registered with the Jandarma , collecting money for Turkish soldiers killed in action , at our front door ( other friends and neighbours I mentioned this to also had the same experience. ) . Their ID looked very faded and they were not in uniform.Once I said we would be happy to make a donation when we were next near to the police station , as we had no money in the house they left. Apart from trying to extract money we suspect that they were also 'casing' the houses , in order to follow up later. All these incidents have been reported to the local police , in the hope that they may be able to establish a pattern but they are inundated with robberies from tourists and residents, and, in our case there was nothing disturbed nor evidence of a forced entry.
I say this in good faith to warn you all , not to receive a tirade of criticism regarding what we should have done . Lesson learned . Thank you
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Thanks Tiff, it's very important to share the bad info as well as the good. Very sorry to hear this happened to you.
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sorry to hear that tiff...puts the frighteners on a bit...we had some-thing similer last year staying in an appartment 3 storeys up.!!.they got in over the roof and in the sliding patio doors....only took cash no cards or passports....the police said that gangs of kurds target tourist resorts....we all must be extra carefull.... :( >:( >:( >:(
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I am also sorry, are you in Calis itself??
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Scary! Seems to be so many burglaries in and around Calis and Koca Calis recently. We have grills and mozzy screens on our villa but nothing seems to stop them!
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Very sorry to hear this,not sure what else you could have done,maybe a safe but we are all human and have we got to come in to our home and put our money in to a safe ?
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Anyway, from what I've been reading on CBF, safes aren't safe anyway - they can be taken away lock, stock & barrel and if upstairs and heavy - thrown down the stairs breaking the floor below.
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If a safe is really heavy, i.e. takes four men to lift it then it would be difficult to lift if there where less than four men breaking in, plus we have a spiral staircase.
We also have a Burglar Alarm than cost £20.00 from B.&.Q. easily fitted to the wall and if the beam is broken a loud alarm is sounded.
O.K. if a burglar wants to break in he will, but put a lot of barriers in his way and he will pick the easy option... No bars, no burglar alarm no safe.. Most burglars are opportunists looking for a quick in and out.
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True. Re burglar alarm for £20, do you mean B&Q in UK? Sounds amazingly cheap!
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We have also had a man knocking on our door collecting money for the soldiers.He showed us an identification card and gave us a receipt for the money we gave him but after reading this it now makes me wonder if he was genuine.Thanks for the warning.
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Really sorry to hear this Tiff... Joan there is a thread running on here re the people collecting for the soldiers it appears they were not genuine at all :(
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If I was having a place built, I'd make sure to sink a safe into the concrete floor. It's a real shame, on the one hand someone will chase you 200 metres to return your purse/wallet which you put down in a shop and on the other shady people are casing the joint and watching you to see when you leave your home. Just be very cautious and take every precaution possible.
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True. Re burglar alarm for £20, do you mean B&Q in UK? Sounds amazingly cheap!
Yes, it was £20.00. It is fitted on the wall and you get a small keychain device with it which has an on/off switch, which says Arm/Disarm. Set it when you leave with the device by pressing "Arm" and when you return just click it at the wall alarm by pressing "Disarm" to switch it off. It needs a battery. It makes a very loud noise if it is set off.
This alarm works for one room only, but if you have a Villa/Apartment with open plan living/dining/kitchen, one on the wall will cover the area.
Also a large dummy Alarm on the wall outside with a flashing light is a very good idea particular when you have the Burglar Alarm set on the inside of the house, it's just another warning to the thief. ;)
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Poor Tiff. I find all of this very sad. Who wants to have to be so vigilant on holiday? At home, I go out, set the burglar alarm and that's it. Recently, I've read or heard that now, not even the iron bars are any good on the doors because they just jemmy them off. If anything kills tourism in Turkey..... or anywhere, it's going to be this kind of thing which kills the chill factor you've gone out there to seek. What a shame for all the lovely genuine Turkish people too who are only trying to make an honest living out of tourism if that were to happen.
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True. Re burglar alarm for £20, do you mean B&Q in UK? Sounds amazingly cheap!
Jacqui you have it in one. the more barriers/threats you put in the Burglars way the more likley
they will try somewhere else, it is always a balance between getting caught and the value obtainable
and the ease of disposal. It is no different in the UK. I live close to Salford, a deprived City with an above
average crime rate, particularly Burglary and Violent Crime so I have two alarm systems, both battery backed,
(classic is cut the power to disable alarms), the control panel also behind a locked secure casing and a wall
safe where I put cash and valuables except small amounts. I dont know about Turkey Safes available but if you can obtain
a good wall safe these can be quite secure as they are bolted through the back to the outside wall so
quite a job to remove them without a hell of a lot of noise, ---- and effort!
Shame there is so much burgulary, and I wonder if the Kurds are really to blame, they seem to be the whipping
boys of Turkey and the Middle East and I dont see them as the Thieves of Baghdad as they often portrayed!
I hate hearing of anyone being burgled, it is such an invasion of your life. Fortunately never happended to me,
but my neighbours both sides of my home have been, twice! I guess it is a trade-off between costs of system and level of security,
Friedland are very good systems and available on ebay. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wireless-house-home-burglar-alarm-Friedland-SL6-/171006575534?pt=UK_Burglar_Alarms&hash=item27d0c943ae make sure whatever you get it is 868MHz and not 433MHz. Easy to fit yourself!