Sunday, December 7, 2008

There oughta be a law...

Oh, wait, there is, or was: Until this past spring, the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code made it illegal--and punishable by imprisonment--to publicly insult "Turkishness" or the "Republic." (Now, under the April amendments, this only applies to purportedly more specific jabs at the “Turkish Nation” or the “Republic of Turkey.")

Though limitations on free speech (especially when they affect our ability to watch funny videos on YouTube) are of course no laughing matter, us yabancı smart-asses have found plenty of humor using this to cry foul at a variety of minor slights that we see as being very un-Turkish:

No çay and ekmek on the table at our favorite breakfast place within five seconds of sitting down?

Why, that's practically insulting Turkishness!

A pide delivery joint that doesn't offer mercimek çorbası?

How can they still be allowed to operate?!

A restaurant closing up shop before 10 p.m.?

May as well haul 'em off to jail now!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, greetings from another ex-pat. I lived in SF for a while too, and I've been here for four years. My wife (and little girl) is Turkish.

I have a host file that I use to get around the You Tube block. You can email me at cuerhart (ambersand) yahoo nokta com, if you want me to send it to you.

The Turkish Life said...

Hello, and happy new year!

Thanks for the offer, but I've got a couple of YouTube work-arounds that seem to being doing the trick for now...

What do you do in Turkey? Always curious about other ex-pats...

Cheers,
Jen

Anonymous said...

I married a Turkish woman, so that's why I'm here. :) I'm in IT. I'm also involved in an Internation theater Group here called Speech Bubbles (www.speechbubbles.com). I found them on accident after I moved here and was very happy to have found them!

If you're using beatfiltering or something like that you can use the host file and then you can use youtube without the extra steps.