Hitting the blog rounds this morning is a story out of Batman, Turkey. No, thats not a strange cross promotion with Thanksgiving and The Dark Knight DVD release but an actual city named Batman in Turkey the country. Apparently Hüseyin Kalkan, the Mayor of said city, has decided that Christopher Nolan (not DC Comics, Bob Kane, or anyone else with claims to creating Batman), has infringed on their rights to the name of their city. At least here in America we have stupid lawsuits against the people actually "responsible" for giving you hot coffe, or neglecting to tell you that the silica gel in packaging is not edible. Anyway...here's a snippit from the Hurriyet Daily news:
“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us … There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us,” [Mayor of Batman city, Hüseyin] Kalkan told the Doğan news agency... Mayor Kalkan, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News and the Economic Review, said last year foreign media picked up on Batman and the city’s increasing suicide rates among women. He said a columnist asked why Batman’s mayor did not sue the movie Batman for royalties while struggling with economic problems. “We found this criticism right and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that,” he said.
