 Turkey's broadcasting watchdog has come under fire for banning four adult television channels, with critics charging that the move flouted the country's efforts to expand individual liberties in its quest to join the European Union.
| Note the slight conflict there: Turkey's a democracy; individual liberty's un-Islamic. What to do? Consult your local holy man. |
The Higher Board of Radio and Television announced its decision to take off air Playboy TV, Adult TV, Exotica TV and Rouge TV on Friday, saying that broadcasts should "conform with the public interest ... and the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the Turkish nation."
| Obviously, all those channels were about to go out of business for lack of viewers, since their content's against the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the entire Turkish nation. |
The board chairman denied suggestions that the ban might have been imposed under pressure from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, a conservative movement with Islamist roots, while officials from Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) also joined the critics.
| That does come as a surprise... |
The four banned channels were broadcast late at night on a private network and were available only to subscribers. "If certain people pay money to watch programs with sexual content, this is their personal choice," senior AKP member Faruk Celik told the mass-selling Hurriyet newspaper yesterday. "This choice concerns not the society but the people who buy that service," he said. "Their liberty should not be restricted."
| But I suspect it will be... |
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