Turkish appeals court expands restriction on pornographic videos

From online dispatches

Possession of CDs depicting video of oral and anal intercourse, together with gay and group sex will be punishable. Hürriyet photo

Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has ruled to sentence persons in possession of videos depicting oral and anal sex to jail terms, daily Vatan reported today. 

The ruling came on the heels of a recent decision by the court which identified videos of gay and group sex as “unnatural.” 

In its latest ruling the court equated videos of oral and anal sex with those of rape, sado-mazochistic sex, bestiality and necrophilia, which were deemed as “unnatural sexual intercourse” in Article 262/2 of the Turkish Penal Code. Owning, trafficking, distributing and publishing such videos are punishable with one to four years in prison according to law. 

Possession of CDs depicting video of oral and anal intercourse, together with gay and group sex will therefore be punishable by the same code, the report said. The same rule applied to videos that were downloaded from the Internet and stored on a computer's hard disk. 

The ruling came after a suspect was sentenced to six months in prison by a local court for selling pornographic CDs. The Supreme Court of Appeals ruled the sentence was too low and said the pornographic videos in question contained episodes of oral and anal sex, which were "unnatural" according to the court. The court overruled the suspect’s original sentence with one suited to the aforementioned article of the Turkish penal code.