Advertisements Required to Include +18 Markings

The Advertisement Board rendered a highly controversial decision in July 2022 concluding that the promotions published by a fashion company on the main page of its website under the title of “My Chosen Family” including the following statements “My Chosen Family: A chosen family consists of members who chose to support and love each other. It celebrates who you are no matter whom you love. Meet the LGBTQIA+ family who chose each other” are against the Constitution and Advertising Regulation. The Board issued a cease order regarding these advertisements.

In the referred decision, in line with the principle for the protection of children’s interests secured by the Turkish Constitution, the international treaties and the legal provisions based on the requirement of preserving children’s emotions and innocence in media activities such as news promotion or advertising for a commercial product, and broadcasting by avoiding any prejudicial effect to them, the Advertisement Board has appreciated that the products pertaining to the sexual orientation containing sexuality and eroticism have to be offered to the sale with the “+18” markings in the products and the promotions subject to the examination and the sales and the promotions of the referred products without warning are intended to perturb and change children’s and adolescents’ mental, ethical, psychological and social development.

The referred decision is based on Article 24 of the Advertising Regulation, which reads as “The advertisement that is children-oriented or is likely to affect the children or in which the child actors feature, shall contain no expression or image that is likely to influence a child’s physical, mental, ethical, psychological and social development negatively and no factor intending to perturb, alter or defame the cultural, ethical or positive social behaviours.”

The decision is controversial in many aspects. First of all the statements, that the Advertisement Board concluded as contrary to the advertising legislation, are not in any way related to goods offered by the advertiser, instead, are only related to the advertising company’s general supportive attitude to LGBTQIA+ individuals and awareness-raising efforts. Therefore, it is even questionable whether the mentioned statements could be accepted as an advertising activity which falls in the scope of the Board’s powers.

Even if these statements could properly be accepted as advertisements, the decision is still open to criticism from several aspects. There is no legal disposition under Turkish law regulating the sales of the products containing the referred themes and expressions with a “+18” marking. There is no restriction in the Constitution where fundamental rights and equality, personal autonomy, right to respect for privacy and family are regulated, indeed, all these values are protected by the Constitution. The Advertisement Board has adopted a brand-new principle regarding commercial advertisements and promotions by the referred decision. The legitimacy of this novel principle and limitation is quite arguable while this restriction that is not enacted in any piece of legislation and implemented into the legal system by the decisions of the Advertisement Board can be claimed not to have a legal basis.

Although the Advertisement Board generally cited some international treaties to justify its decision, the Board did not clearly establish in which aspect the statements referring to the love and confidence basis of a family would negatively influence children’s or teenagers’ development.

It is seen that the Advertisement Board maintains its criticized approach also previously applied in its decision of November 2020 where it deemed the promotions and the sales of products such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, phone cases, beach towels offered for sale on various e-commerce sites with expressions ”normal”, “LGBT”, “LGBT Power”, “Equality, Bisexual, Freedom, Lesbian, Gay, Love is Love, Homosexual”, "LGBT Relationship”, “Love is Love”, “Pride”, “Peace”, “Love is Love”, and rainbow themes without +18 markings against the Constitution and the Advertising Regulation.