March 5, 2009

Maybe We Should Bomb Turkey Next

I never spent any time thinking about the country of Turkey... until I noticed that Turkey represents the third-largest readership of The Minister of Common Sense blog. (By the way, I always feel like I have to say “the country of Turkey” instead of just “Turkey”, because in English, “Turkey” means the Thanksgiving Day bird. What a stupid name for a country – probably one of the most stupid. Couldn't they have translated it any differently?)

Anyway, my blog gets the most hits from readers in the United States, which is no surprise since it is my home country. The second greatest number of hits comes from Canada, which is also understandable given that they are (generally) English speaking and it is next door to the U.S., although I may have lost some Canadian readership if they took offense to my post from a few weeks ago. However (and this is where it gets surprising), after Canada, Turkey ranks as the third-highest hit count on my website, which narrowly beat out fourth-ranked Australia. I have had hits from 33 different countries around the world, and TURKEY is the 3rd most popular visitor??

Do you believe it? How random, right?! Actually, as it turns out, it’s not random at all... in fact, it’s pretty damn scary. I did some more digging and it turns out that every single hit that I have ever gotten from the country of Turkey has only gone to one page of my blog... my tongue-in-cheek rant on January 15 called “Stop the Baby Porn”. They have never clicked or gone to any other page – just that one page. Because of Turkey, the “Stop the Baby Porn” post is now the second-most viewed page on The Minister of Common Sense website, following the infamous “Hosting Weddings Sucks” post that caused all the drama with The Knot.com.

I was a little suspicious, so I did some more investigating and every visit to my blog by someone in Turkey came as a result of them Googling the phrase “babyporn”. As it turns out, my blog ranks as #8 on the Turkish version of Google when you enter the phrase “babyporn”. It is the ambition of every Internet site to climb high in the Google rankings, but this wasn't really what I had in mind.

What kind of pedophiles are they breeding over there in Turkey?! For the record, all these hits I received came from all over the country: Istanbul, Bursa, Antalya, Ankara, Izmir, Gebze, Kayseri, Denizli, Konya, Trabzon, Adapazari and Mugla.

And they are not even searching for “child porn”, but BABY porn. My god, does baby porn even really exist?? Jesus, I can’t even think about it. Is it possible that “baby” translated into Turkish is actually slang for “girl” or “woman” or “hot woman”? Sort of how we might say here in America “Hey, baby, how’s it going?” or how someone might call a woman a "chick". So if we Googled for "chick porn", we wouldn't be looking for CHICKEN porn (as someone might literally translate), but actually normal, legal porn with chicks (women). I’m just trying to hope that it’s not what the Turks are making it appear.

I am a liberal and in favor of civil rights, however, it does make me wonder whether the government of Turkey should go out and identify these people and raid their homes, looking for proof of child pornography or something. I know that it is a slippery legal slope, and we don’t want to recreate McCarthyism, but it’s unsettling to know that people are overtly searching for illegal and incredibly harmful material. I guess that searching for it isn't illegal, but it just sucks that law enforcement probably has to sit there and wait for an activity to officially turn illegal before they can do anything about it. And, who knows... Turkey isn't exactly a bastion of human rights, so it might not be illegal over there at all!

One person in Turkey found my website by searching for “bayb porno pohoto” (at least he knew how to spell the most important word properly), which just reminds us that English isn't their first language over there – it’s Turkish. So the people who found my website in Turkey were searching for baby porn in English and not in their native language. It makes me wonder if they do this because English-speaking people make and propagate the most child pornography, which is an awful thought. So maybe it’s really more of “our” problem and as much a Turkish problem. (For the record, my website does NOT come up when you search for “babyporn” in the U.S. or Canadian version of Google. I’m not naive enough to believe that this search term isn't Googled every single day here in North America, but you just hope that it returns with “zero matches”. At least I’m not cracking the Top Ten Google list when they search for it. However, I am #1 when you search for "stop the baby porn", but let's hope that I am not the only crusader. Hmm... now that I think about it... I just Googled for "baby porn" myself while writing this post. So, I guess under my McCarthyism regime that I suggested in the paragraph above, I would have to be investigated, too. Oops.)

The first time I figured out all this information, I started to freak out. I began to wonder whether the joke photos that I posted in the Stop The Baby Porn Blog were actually exciting these pedophiles. I even went back and increased the size of the black boxes covering the bits on the baby to make SURE that I wasn't accidentally helping out the Turkish web browsers. One statistic of relief is that 93% of my Turkish visitors spent less than one second on the website, so the photos weren't very engaging for them. However, while their quick departure from my web page may be a little encouraging, it also indicates that they weren't searching for how to stop or prevent baby porn either, otherwise the title of my blog would have captivated them for longer than one second. So, you have to assume that they were looking for the real thing, which is upsetting.

Based on The Minister of Common Sense website statistics, Turkey ranks as the #1 country for pedophiles. So since America has a history of indiscriminately attacking foreign countries, maybe Obama should go George Bush on their ass, too?

14 comments:

  1. that is very weird and creepy!! who would have known this was going on over there?

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  2. I guess that is the dangers of the internet!

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  3. Maybe we should look for WPD - weapons of porn destruction!

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  4. The U.S would never bomb Turkey cause they are very strong allies.Turkey is the 2nd strongest military power in NATO and the U.S just declared that Turkey is the 4th strongest nuclear power in the world.By th way if u lost so many soldiers in Iraq i guess attacking a country with nuclear abilities and a obligatory military service for all men the age of 20 for at least a year would not be very smart, and besides no one can afford a war in this economic struggling times.So next time u suggest there should be war where not only soldiers bt also women and children die u should do a little more research into that.

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  5. Oh for god's sake, Anonymous, don't be so stupid. I'm being sarcastic about bombing them because they light up the pedophile search engine (according to the website hits I receive from Turkey). I'm not actually advocating bombing Turkey. However, I am now advocating bombing you.

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  6. Good read, considering I found this page by google-searching "Bomb Turkey".

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  7. That can't translate to porn you suck ass! I'm Turkish you aren't! That's wrong! Turks aren't pedophiles! It's the Aussies and the Americans!! You can't possibly rely on Google translate. You must be pretty stupid to rely on Google translate. And no don't think about attacking Turkiye because we can pown your ass! Turkiye ranks as the 2nd strongest military in the NATO and the US. Suk on that Minister of Common Sense! Actually you should be called Minister of dumbasses! LOL

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  8. Jesimfurgan, no one is trying to "translate porn". Maybe you didn't understand the post... all I am saying is that my one article titled in English "Stop the Baby Porn" has gotten an inordinate number of hits from Turkey. No one from Turkey is looking at any other page on my blog, except that one. How do you think all these people, from half way around the world, happened to land on that particular page? Draw your own conclusions!

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  9. Being a turk myself, it was actually an interesting read in terms of statistical analysis, whatever the subjectivity of the observer and the test group is.

    but still, there is no point in denying that the suppression on sexual experiences in this country eventually leads people to find bizarre outlets for their hormonal frustration. if it was not the case, then sexually content people wouldn't need to suppress their feelings to a point, where perversion and legitimate desires are more or less the same kind of taboo.

    though that does not explain why especially turkey.

    consequently, i'm not here to bully you by mentioning the gun power of turkey, because it is simply idiotic. besides if i found out something about another country, i would definitely be outraged as you are. just keep in mind that this is not something that would be appreciated here in turkey. at least i never thought about "baby porn" or heard about it, until this post.

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  10. oh and, turkey (animal) used to be imported from turkey (country) to the west and hence it was called "the turkey bird". within the previous century it became known as turkey, getting its name entirely from the country. so the issue is not exactly calling a country by a bird type. it's the other way round - still stupid though.

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  11. you engilshman can suck all the turks dicksa this is soo bullshit i mean they arlready kicked ur asses in the 1st world war what else do u expect

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  12. that's the most stupid & idiotic article (with a very subjective argument) I've ever seen. What do you drink buddy? Keystone? Lame!

    Next time write those articles while you're sober. So your readers might not think that you're not only ignorant but also racist.

    Adios!

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  13. Hola, Anonymous! You are so stupid not to know when something is facetious. Maybe we should bomb Mexico next.

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  14. To all my Turkish friends that recently posted a slew of comments on this blog...

    First of all, thanks for reading and your interest. Second of all, I didn't publish any of them, because they all so clearly missed the point. I hate spelling this out so directly, but if readers are too stupid to figure it out, I guess I have to.

    This blog is facetious and satire (i.e. humor). I don't really want to bomb Turkey. I said "bomb turkey" because stupid America is so trigger happy that bombing a country always seems like the "right thing to do"! (So that is a joke against my country.)

    Many accused me of "not doing enough research" and that I should learn more about Turkey before writing about it. I was sent lots of information on why it's a great country. Idiots, this is not a PhD thesis - it was a tongue-in-cheek article about how I was getting web hits from people in Turkey searching for porn. "Baby porn" is a term I made up and was a joke. Is everyone from Turkey into porn or baby porn or molestation? No. Are some? Certainly. Is the same true of America? Yes.

    So now that I'm ruined my own article my painstakingly explaining what sarcasm is and that I was not actually serious about bombing Turkey or any country (despite how obvious that was in the writing) maybe you can all get back to your lives and be relieved.

    It really frustrates me that tongue-in-cheek prose can consistently go over people's heads. Maybe we should bomb "people" next...

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