There are somethings that happen so often that we become almost innured to them until someone points out the obvious. Yavuz Semerci, a leading Turkish columnist and former editor of Vatan did just that this month when he launched www.gazeteport.com.tr. He said this new internet newspaper would differ from its rivals because unlike Hürriyet and Milliyet’s online editions he wouldn’t be using sex to sell the paper, photographs of naked ladies not relevant to the stories they precede wouldn’t be the driving force behind his news. In the UK sexual exploitation of the female form is commonplace, from the infamous fellatio on a Flake advert to the unhinged grins of girls with their breasts on display on Page 3, and rarley challenged directly.

In Turkey though things are not the same there is currently a long running discussion about the removal of swimsuit billboards on the way to the airport. Tayyıp Erdoğan, the prime minister has objected to their placement claiming they are likely to offend pilgrims travelling to go on their hajj to Mecca. While there are no actual rules banning full frontal nudity on the internet, TV, advertisements and the cinema it is still much less prevalent than in Europe and where it is used much more likely to cause shock. Since the religiously inclined AK Party came to power in 2003 conservatives have felt freer to challenge the increasingly liberal attitudes that have been spreading accross the country often with interesting and unusual results.

In May 2005 the Turkish broadcasting authority, the Radio and Television High Council, banned four erotica channels on Digiturk, Turkey’s only satellite television provider. Regarded as a conservative body the decision makers in the council deemed the Adult Channel, Exotica TV, Rouge TV and Playboy TV as broadcasting material that violated Turkish values. Under their own licensing regulations Turkish television must be in the ‘public service’ and the soft porn available only at night on the four channels was deemed to offend ‘the Tukish nation’s national, ethical, humaitarian, spiritual and cultural values.’ The ban seemed especially harsh to the producers of Playboy TV which, like its magazine namesake, is well known for sticking to softcore programming while other networks have grown increasingly explicit. 

Similar attitudes amongst some of the public have led to the vandalisation of nude female statues. In September 2003 a marble statue titled ‘The thin woman’ by Greek sculptor  Gelas Kessidis on display at Trakya University was knocked over and broken from it’s pedestal at foot level. İt was never clear whether the vandalism was prompted by hostility to the nationality of the sculptor, an attack of public prudery or the same kind of student high jinks that lead to cow pushing in rural English universities. Another similar incident ocurred in December 2006 in Edirne (which is also where Trakya University is located) when a nude female bronze put up by the Turkish Women’s Union to celebrate the 80th year of the republic was lassoed and toppled. The incident was taken seriously by the local council who were appalled that such an event should take place in a large town in western European Turkey and quickly made repairs. Is it possible that statue toppling has become a rag week ritual in this particular area? 

In a similar vein was the removal form 7th year schoolbooks of the world famous French revolution picture by Edward Delacroix of ‘Liberty leading the people’ in which Liberty’s dress has become ripped during the fighting and her breasts exposed. While the nudity in the painting is gratuitous - all the men, bar one poor chap in the foreground who has had the trousers stolen from his corpse, seem to have made it throuch the civil war zone fully clothed – the picture had previously been included in textbooks on citizenship and human rights for five years. The decision taken by the Minisrty of Education was interpreted by teacher’s unions and liberals as an example of how AK Party is using it’s position as the current government to try to change the moral tone of what is acceptable in art and literature in Turkey.

Seperate to the issue of İslam and nudity Turkey does have one especial hang up about the female nude and that is it’s proximity to the national flag. Film maker Andres Vincent Gomez has tried for years to have his film ‘La Passion Turca’ (the story of a Spanish tourist who falls in love with her Turkish tour guide) distributed in Turkey but has yet to have any success. Publicity materials for the film feature a Turkish flag with a naked woman lying face down just to the left of the crescent moon. The film was recently shown at the Berlin Film Festival and is critically acclaimed but distributors in Turkey refuse to have anything to do with it even if the publicity materials were changed as they claim it still disrespects the venerated and seemingly sacrosanct flag.

Despite these incidents Turkey is still undoubtedly the muslim country with the most relaxed attitude to female nudity. İn Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen all forms of public nudity are banned and those who try even something as innocent as skinny dipping can be fined up to $2000, imprisoned for up to 12 months and beaten up by the authorities. In Iran in 2001 the government even tried to ban naked mannequins in shop windows. İndonesia has a long running scandal concerning Playboy magazine which despite being very tame and the only Playboy franchise not to feature nudes has still found its editor regularly in court for violating the indecency provisions of the criminal code.

İn Turkey by contrast there are nudist freindly beaches in Dalyan on İztuzu beach, Bitez beach in Bodrum and Patara in Antalya. The worst that is likely to happen to the naked sunbathing tourist is that the Turk passing by may take a good long look if they are a red-blooded young man or avert their eyes in sudden embarassment if they are not. In Italy by contrast nudity in public is banned and in the USA, libertarian defender of freedom, all nudity and sex is banned from public television and age requirements are placed on printed material of that nature. Turkey is also famous for it’s habit of communal bathing and Turkish baths encourage one to get naked or nearly naked although they are (except in tourist areas) almost always single sex.

Turks seem to have contradictory but paralell attitudes to nude females, nude and nearly nude foreign women are fine but not scantily clad Turkish women – most Turkish actresses would never do a nude or explicitly sexual scene. The real problem seems to lie not with the naked woman herself but with the amount of arousal she is likely to provoke, the more enticing the image the more hostility it is likely to generate. Yavuz Semerci may be correct that Hürriyet and Milliyet exploit naked women to improve their reader figures but the conservative mindset of their readers means they don’t really get to exploit them all that much.