ISTANBUL – Whether you’re a business traveler, a tourist, a member of the armed services or an international fugitive, if you also happen to be a porn consumer, it’s never a bad idea to make a mental checklist of do’s, don’ts and holy shit for fuck’s sake don’ts to guide your porn-consuming conduct while on the road.
For instance, when in Mexico, it’s good to know the best porn actually comes in written form, sold as little novellas at the Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente (TAPO) in Mexico City. My favorite was Soy Lesbiana. True, Spanish has never been my strong suit and I’ve annihilated more than a few brain cells since reading that story, but as I recall the novella told the story of a young female soybean farmer who enters into a forbidden sexual relationship with a novitiate from a Sonoran nunnery.
At the end, the young would-be nun’s father, a strict Catholic and dedicated mariachi, furiously beats both young women to death with his trumpet, then leaves a suicide note in song form before jumping off a nearby bridge. I know it sounds a bit depressing, but the sex scenes were pretty hot and if you squinted long enough at the cover, I swear you could see some cartoon nun-nipple.
Admittedly, I haven’t been to TAPO since the late 1980s, so it’s certainly possible things there have changed a bit. But I also remember the bathrooms being much, much cleaner than those at the Terminal de Autobuses de 2a Clase in Merida.
At any rate, my porn-travel checklist just received a new entry in the don’ts column, courtesy of Turkey’s Constitutional Court: Never “store” porn in Turkey.
According to the Hürriyet Daily News, the Constitutional Court upheld a law that provides jail time for those who “store” oral, anal, group, gay or lesbian porn, reasoning such forms of porn are “unnatural.”
A lower court previously found the law runs contrary to articles of the Turkish constitution which serve to protect personal rights and privacy rights, but 12 out of the Constitutional Court’s 16 judges disagreed with the lower court, finding the law doesn’t criminalize the sex acts themselves, just the promotion and promulgation of unnatural sex acts within Turkish society.
While blowjob-appreciating Turks probably think this ruling sucks harder than any unnatural porn, the most important part of the ruling for Turks who have already resigned themselves to watching footage of other guys getting sucked off is the part clarifying that personal porn possession is just as frowned-upon as trying to become the Turkish equivalent of Larry Flynt.
Serdar Kaleli and Serdar Özgüldür, two of the four dissenting judges, said the law allows “disproportionate intervention to privacy and is against the order of democratic society” and noted the penalty for owning a single “unnatural” porn DVD is the same for someone who sells and distributes millions of DVDs.
If there’s one silver lining here for porn-consuming Turks, it’s the fact their government officials seem to think people still “store” porn — on DVD. As such, the Turkish cops might not even think to check people’s smartphones for “unnatural” things like blowjob videos or evidence of intent to promote and/or distribute gayness.
Still, I’ve seen Midnight Express, so just to be 100-percent safe, the next time I’m in Instanbul I’m going “cold Turkey” on the porn. Shit, I might even delete those old pictures of my dog wearing Halloween costumes from my phone, lest I find myself accused of “promoting bestiality” or “storing images of unnaturally-clothed animals.”
By the way: Does anybody know if erotic novellas are sold at Kayseri Erkilet International Airport? (In Spanish, preferably.)
