By Stewart Tongue

YNOT EUROPE – A court’s decision in an obscenity case took an unexpected turn when the judge essentially ruled gay sex legal and moral in Turkey.

That may be of little comfort to the defendant, who will spend eight months in prison for distributing pornographic DVDs depicting necrophilia and bestiality.

The odyssey began when the defendant, identified only as DM, was charged with distributing illegal, “unnatural” material based on the seizure of 125 adult DVDs. Much of the material depicted gay and group sex. In his ruling, Judge Mehmet Erdemli set aside that content, saying sex between living, consensual, adult humans is outside the Turkish legal system’s jurisdiction.

“Today it is possible to have gay marriages in modern countries,” Erdemli wrote. “International regulations prohibit discrimination regarding peoples’ sexual preference, and it is therefore an obligation to respect their sexual orientation. In this respect, most of the European countries see gay relationships as equivalent to marriage.”

Erdemli’s decision contradicted a ruling made last year by the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals. He may yet be overruled, though that seems unlikely as both the prosecutor and the defendant seemed satisfied with the sentence. The defendant faced as many as four years of imprisonment if convicted on all counts.

The ruling surprised observers both inside and outside the country. A democratic, secular, constitutional republic since 1923, Turkey generally is considered a progressive Western nation. With a population that is primarily Muslim (97-98 percent), the country stands at a crossroads between Europe and the Middle East and has cultivated close cultural, political and economic relations with both regions.