Tuesday 22 May 2007

Hello, Boys ! - Turkey Ready to Join EU ?

One needs to think carefully before agreeing with the French, but when it comes to the vexed question of whether Turkey is ready to join the EU, they may have a point.

Today we read that Istanbul's urban planning department has banned billboard advertisements for bikinis, saying:

"The photographs were not up to EU standards and could cause car accidents"

Do they understand nothing? A bikini ad meeting EU standards is guaranteed to cause car accidents, and indeed a whole range of minor industrial and domestic mishaps. What will they think when they are forced to import French body-lotion posters?

Clearly, they have a cultural mountain to climb.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That has happened in Greece too, I read about about how it was driving Athenian drivers to distraction. And we both know there is no lost between these two countries, so I wondered who had this idea first.

Electro-Kevin said...

'Clearly they have a cultural mountain to climb.'

Well I hope so, Nick. Because it's either that or we have a cultural mountain to bore through. And knowing Mohammad's ability to make mountains move it'll be us making all the concessions.

Nick Drew said...

Funnily enough I seem to recall similar posters being challenged by the ASA in the UK also

oops ...

CityUnslicker said...

still doing well I see ND. I am back Monday...

Anonymous said...

Glad to see we can only talk about the dos and donts of advertising bill boards in new soon to be Euro state of Turkey. But what about their Human rights record ? Or will that be mulled over and standardised by the european parliament with a directive on how to correctly to hang a guilty person and many more directives on the correct grade of rope to be used.