Constitutional Court Finds the Punishment of “Unnatural” Intercourse Images Acceptable
Constitutional Court (AYM) decided that the 226/4th Article of Turkish Criminal Law which punishes the individuals who possess, sell or store oral, anal, group, homosexual and lesbian intercourses’ images, records and writings does not violate the law.
According to the 226/4th Article of Turkish Criminal Law, “The person who produces, smuggles, sells, transports, stores, makes others use or possess the writings, records and images of intercourses with animals and human corpses by violence or intercourses by unnatural ways is sentenced from a year up to 4 years and imposed punitive fine for 5000 days.”
Suing for “Unnatural Intercourses’ Images”
According to the news of journalist Kemal Göktaş from Milliyet Daily Newspaper, the police raided a workplace in Aydın Province (in Southwest of Turkey) with the claim of “pornographic images are shown” and found a flash disk which included pornographic images.
Owner of the workplace said that he downloaded those images from internet and he just watched them on his own and he never sold them or showed them in the workplace to the other people.
Defendant was sued for “storing” ‘unnatural’ intercourses’ images from a year up to 4.
The court appealed to the Constitutional Court
Aydın 3rd Criminal Court of First Instance handling the case appealed to the Constitutional Court with the claim that this punishment was against the constitution.
Criminal Court of First Instance stated that the expression “unnatural” was ambiguous, obscure and open to dispute and “oral or anal intercourse” were not forbidden.
Constitutional Court dismissed
Constitutional Court dismissed the request with consensus and stated that the act of intercourse was not prohibited but they tried to prevent this kind of pornographic images from being shared to public. It was defended that the act of intercourse could be in too many different ways and to include all of it in the law was impossible. (EKN/BD)