Netflix Cancels Turkish Show Over Gay Character

Netflix has canceled the Turkish drama ‘If Only’ on the eve of filming after Turkish officials learned that it featured a gay character and refused to grant it a license.

“Due to a gay character, permission to film the series was not granted and this is very frightening for the future,” a source told Turkish film website Altyazi Fasikul.

‘If Only’ was due to tell the story of Reyhan, a mother of twins, unhappily married, who is transported 30 years back to the night her husband proposed.

As ‘BBC’ reports, although the series would not feature gay sex scenes or physical contact between the gay man featured in the series and any of the other characters, Netflix decided to cancel the show after talks with Turkey’s audiovisual authority RTUK.

The deputy chairman of Turkey's ruling party, Mahir Unal, stated that he believed Netflix would “show greater sensitivity to Turkish culture and art with deeper co-operation” in the future.

Netflix said it remained “deeply committed” to its Turkish subscribers and those in the country's creative community.

In a statement, the company said: “We currently have several Turkish originals in production - with more to come - and look forward to sharing these stories with our members all around the world”.

Read related myGwork articles here:

Trans Child Actor Appears On “The Baby-Sitters Club” On Netflix

Sri Lanka Launches First Ever LGBT+ Series Highlighting The Stories Of LGBT+ Sri Lankans

Taiwan’s LGBT+ Streaming Platform GagaOOLala Launches Worldwide

Pixar’s Short Film ‘Out’ Is A Queer Love Story

Keep up to date with the latest myGnews

LGBT professionals, LGBT Graduates, LGBT professional network, LGBT professional events, LGBT networking events, LGBT Recruitment, LGBT Friendly organisations, LGBT Friendly companies, LGBT jobs