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Is Turkey at war with American sitcom 'Friends'? 

WION Web Team
New DelhiEdited By: Gravitas deskUpdated: Mar 18, 2021, 10:51 AM IST
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Photograph:(Instagram)

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Turkey has declared a war on the hit American sit-com 'Friends.' A Turkish news outlet claims that the show promotes homosexuality, incest, infidelity, and drugs

We all know that there kinds of people in this world. One who speak 'Friends' and the others who have not watched the popular American sitcom ever. But there is also a 'special breed' that finds the comedy show obscene. Yes, you read that right. 

Turkey has declared a war on the hit American sit-com 'Friends.' A Turkish news outlet claims that the show promotes homosexuality, incest, infidelity, and drugs and believes human arms are obscene. So much so, that it has decided to blur the arms of the female cast - Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Anniston- from the poster. 

OTT giant Netflix announced that it would be streaming 'Friends' in Turkey. Anywhere else in the world-- this would have called for a celebration. But the publication in Turkey carried out an article titled 'Netflix aims to target young people with the depraved series 'Friends'!' The article carried a poster of the show, with bare arms of the female cast blurred out. 

The world 'depraved' means being morally corrupt. In Turkey, it means war. War on Muslim society, one being led by Netflix.

This publication believes 'Friends' promotes homosexuality. It also apparently promotes incest, infidelity, drugs and child abuse.

Really? One can't help but wonder as to what version of the show is the editor of the publication watching?

We must add here, that the outlet in question has earlier been accused of anti-semitism and homophobia. It is also reportedly closely-linked to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

Even joey will be able to join the dots here. We get it, that Turkey is trying very hard to woo the Muslim world. But calling out 'Friends'for obscenity is a little too much.

This attempt at censorship/joke comes at a time-- when Turkey is trying to scrub the social media- of everything it considers as 'Fake'. 

Erdogan's govt has announced its own fact-checking platform called Doğru mu which translates to 'Is it true?'. 

Well, calling the sitcom 'depraved' is surely not.