Turkey get Pokémon back! :: News

Reported by Psythor on Sun 08 Dec 2002 19:23:39 UTC
Last updated by Psythor on Sun 08 Dec 2002 19:23:39 UTC
Section: Episode Guides

Three years ago, Pokémon was banned from being shown on Turkish TV.

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We may complain the lack of new episodes or rubbish showing times Pokémon in Britain- but we have it lucky. The Turkish havn't had Pokémon on their TV for two years!

It was banned from television in December 2000 after a seven year old girl and four year old boy fell from high buildings in two seperate incidents. The health minister back then, Osman Durmus, instead of blaming the kids stupidity or the large scary man that may have been pushing them off, decided to blame Pokémon. Astonishingly, the channel was then ordered to be "blacked out" for a day!

As you might expect, ATV (the channel that showed it), were pretty annoyed- they complained that it might wreck Turkey's chances of joining the EU. Despite being a candidate since 1974, Turkey was not invited earlier this year when the EU announced that it was going to expand from 15 to 25 countries.

Anyway, two years later, an Election has put a different party in power (in 18 months time anyway), and now Turkey's first private TV station, Star TV have picked up the rights to Pokémon and will be showing it to the people of Turkey, and anyone who might have a correctly pointed Satellite dish (not Sky), can see Pokémon on weekend mornings at 8:40am Turkish time. That's 6:40am British time.