ISTANBUL - Turkey's broadcasting regulator is fining a television
channel for insulting religious values after it aired an episode of "The
Simpsons" which shows God taking orders from the devil.
Radio and television watchdog RTUK said it was fining private
broadcaster CNBC-e 52,951 lira ($30,000) over the episode of the hit
U.S. animated TV series, whose scenes include the devil asking God to
make him a coffee.
"The board has decided to
fine the channel over these matters," an RTUK spokeswoman said but
declined further comment, saying full details would probably be
announced next week.
CNBC-e said it would comment once the fine was officially announced.
Turkey is a secular republic but most of its 75 million people are
Muslim. Religious conservatives and secular opponents vie for public
influence and critics of the government say it is trying to impose
Islamic values by stealth.
Elected a decade ago
with the strongest majority seen in years, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
and his Islamist-rooted AK Party have overseen a period of
unprecedented prosperity in Turkey. But concerns are growing about
authoritarianism.
Erdogan last week tore into a
chart-topping soap opera about the Ottoman Empire's longest-reigning
Sultan and the broadcasting regulator has warned the show's makers about
insulting a historical figure.
"The Simpsons"
first aired in 1989 and is the longest-running U.S. sitcom. It is
broadcast in more than 100 countries and CNBC-e has been airing it in
Turkey for almost a decade.
"I wonder what the
script writers will do when they hear that the jokes on their show are
taken seriously and trigger fines in a country called Turkey," wrote
Mehmet Yilmaz, a columnist for the Hurriyet newspaper.
"Maybe they will add an almond-moustached RTUK expert to the series,"
he said, evoking a popular Turkish stereotype of a pious government
supporter.
($1 = 1.7873 Turkish liras) — Reuters
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