Broadway Star "Furious" After Turkey Blocks Gay Cruise, As Ship Diverts to Crete
Ankara Panics Over Pool Parties, Leaving Egypt and Greece to Pocket the Tourists’ Disposable Income
Did no one notice that this Virgin’s complexion and the Turkish flag match?
If Tony-award winning singer and actress Patti Lupone did, she was too hopping mad to notice it. Even her Broadway pedigree couldn’t sway an intransigent Turk.
"I am furious, but I am sailing, as the ship will make other ports of call," Lupone wrote on Instagram after the biggest cruise ship debacle of the year.
In a move that screams “we are totally secure in our national identity,” Turkish authorities officially banned an Atlantis Events charter from docking at its scheduled ports this month. The Scarlet Lady—owned and operated by Virgin Voyages (the cruise line founded by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Bain Capital) carrying roughly 1,900 vacationers on a 10-day "Athens to Venice" Mediterranean sprint—was slated to bring its disposable income to Istanbul and the beach resort town of Kuşadası.
Instead, local officials panicked, pulled the plug, and canceled the port calls. Why? Because according to provincial (and the key word there is provincial) authorities, a boatload of men in speedos is officially “incompatible with the fabric of our society and our moral values.”
Yes, really. Apparently, the fabric of Turkish society is a delicate, single-ply tissue easily torn by the mere presence of show tunes and high-end skincare routines.
While homosexuality isn’t technically illegal in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has spent the last few years treating the LGBTQ+ community like a geopolitical supervillain. Clearly, the threat of 1,900 tourists ordering mid-morning mimosas was simply too high a national security risk for Ankara to handle.
With that in mind, let’s remember everybody’s favorite movie about good times in Turkey, Midnight Express. Or everybody’s favorite book about good times in Turkey, Never Pass This Way Again.
Faced with a sudden ban from a country suffering a severe case of the vapors, Atlantis Events had to scramble. The ship’s itinerary was hastily rewritten to redirect the voyage to Alexandria, Egypt and Heraklion, Crete—places famously known for being slightly less intimidated by a well-choreographed pool party.
No word yet on whether Turkey’s moral fabric has successfully recovered from the near-miss, but the Scarlet Lady sailed on, proving that you can ban the ship, but you can’t stop the vacation.
