Pokémon in Turkey: Difference between revisions

Pokémon in Turkey
Flag of Turkey
Language	Turkish
Continent	Europe
Original anime airdates
EP001	Late 1999 or Early 2000
AG001	2006
DP001	2008 or 2009
BW001	2011
XY001	September 1, 2014
SM001	April 1, 2018
JN001
HZ001

The Pokémon franchise first arived in Turkey, in late 1999 or early 2000, with the airing of Pokémon! Ben seni seçiyorum!

Games

Though the games and consoles themselves have been sold by private retailers previously, after the release of Wii and DS, a distributor for Turkey, Nortec Eurasia, took the mantle of Nintendo Turkey, releasing the NDS titles, Pokémon Diamond & Pearl, which went to become bestsellers in Turkey.^[1] However, after the bankruptcy of Nintendo Turkey, there weren't any Pokémon games until 2018.^[2] In April 2018, CD Media, the current distributor company of Nintendo Turkey announced that they made a contract for the Turkish market, which, according to the CEO of CD Media, will allow Nintendo to send games from various franchises such as Pokémon.

Pokémon anime

The exact date of the Pokémon anime's debut is unknown, but some Turkish fan websites claim it was first shown in Turkey on January 31, 2000 on ATV,^[3] though others claim it was the end of 1999.^[4]

In Turkey, there were two separate reports of kids flying off their windows while claiming to be Pokémon in Late 2000. One of these was Ferhat Ağırbaş, a four-year-old child from Mersin on October 30.^[5] Another was Seyda Aykanat, a seven-year-old student from Kilis on November 25.^[6] After this incident, on December 13, 2000, ATV stopped airing Pokémon.

In early 2001, RTÜK, or Radio and Television Supreme Council of Turkey, declared a ban on the anime as a part of Article 4 of Act No. 3984, due to having "a negative influence on the physical, psychological and moral development of children" after doing several studies on the affects of the anime.^[7]This was due to the aforementioned reports of kids flying off their windows. Even though its popularity had begun to dwindle in 2002, many fans were excited when Pokémon had been silently relaunched on December 9 by Star TV. First, the first few seasons were aired from that date until June 2005, when RTÜK found out about this and forced Star TV to remove Pokémon from the air.^[8] The magazine of Presidency of Religious Affairs, Diyanet, has reiterated similar claims by RTÜK on March 2, 2005.^[9] After this, Channel 1 and Channel 7 began to broadcast the first episodes of Pokémon for a while. The airing dates for the Advanced Generation series are unknown, though it is believed that it began airing sometime around 2006; the Diamond & Pearl series began airing sometime in 2008 or 2009; and the Best Wishes series began airing sometime in 2011.

The anime fully started re-airing on September 1, 2014, beginning with the seventeenth season. It carried through the subsequent years, and on April 7, 2018, the twentieth season was released on Netflix. In Turkey, the anime is available on Netflix.

Cast and crew

Ahmet Taşar has voiced the main character Ash Ketchum from 2000 to 2016. Kerem Kobanbay has voiced Ash Ketchum from 2016 to 2018. Birtanem Coşkun Candaner provided the voice of Misty while Tugay Erverdi has provided the voice of Brock. Jessie was voiced by Figen Harman while James was voiced by Levent Sülün and then by Aydoğan Temel. Murat Keskinoğlu provided the voice of Meowth. Officer Jenny was voiced by Mehpare Özlük, while Professor Oak was voiced by Tunç Ozdil.

Pokémon movies

Almost all of the Pokémon movies until the nineteenth were translated and dubbed in Turkish as well. Only the eighth and tenth movies have never been dubbed into Turkish. The first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back, was shown in theaters on June 18, 2000, and the second movie, The Power of One, was shown in theaters in February 2001. The third movie, Spell of the Unown, was released on DVD in 2003. Disney XD aired the Turkish dubbing of the eleventh and twelfth films at an unknown date. In 2011, Zoroark: Master of Illusions and White—Victini and Zekrom and Black—Victini and Reshiram and were released on DVD in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Mewtwo Returns was also released in Turkish with the title Pokémon Özel Film: Mewtwo’nun Geri Dönüşü.

Music

Until to the twelfth season, the dub used the English version of the opening themes. However, since the twelfth season, Turkish dubbed opening themes have been used for the series.

The Turkish CD version of Pokémon Theme was sung by Ahmet Taşar. The first album was released in 2001. It was adapted by Sibel Erülgen, engineered by Fuat Güney, and produced by BMG MÜZİK A.Ş. Gülşen Karanlık and Kerem Akaydın also provided vocals for a majority of the songs featured in the album.

Related articles

• List of Turkish Pokémon themes

External links

• Some photos of the early news articles about Pokémon from Turkish newspapers (in Turkish)
• Fan history of Pokémon in Turkey (in Turkish)

References

This article is part of Project Globe, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon franchise around the world.