Pole position

The numbers on the speedometer of a Turkish driver, as glimpsed on his social media post, showed he could give the fastest Formula One racer a run for his money.

F1 star Lando Norris sped at 266 kilometers per hour when he topped the Hungarian Grand Prix on 3 August. In Turkey, Abdulkadir Uraloglu managed a top speed of 225 kph when he drove on the Ankara-Nigde highway near the capital Ankara on 24 August, as shown on the video he posted on the short messaging site X, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

The speed limit on that highway is 140 kph, according to AFP.

It was a brazen display by Uraloglu, who happens to be Turkey’s transport minister, and said he was on an inspection of the highway when he inadvertently showed his speedometer. He was fined 9,267 lira or the equivalent amount of his speed in US dollars ($225). He also posted on X a copy of the fine with the promise to be more careful from now on.

Meanwhile, a foreign visitor to Turkey was in pole position, which in F1 racing parlance refers to the top driver entering a race.

The young woman reportedly performed several gravity-defying maneuvers on a flagpole on a hilltop in Uchisar in Turkey’s prime tourist region of Cappadocia.

A social media video of the 12-second show angered local officials as the woman was wearing a white T-shirt and blue leggings as she danced on the pole which was deemed offensive to “the nation’s moral values,” AFP reports.

The governor’s office in Nevsehir province filed a criminal complaint against the woman, without giving her name, nationality or age, prompting an investigation of the incident by the area’s chief public prosecutor, according to AFP.

The complaint cited the Turkish penal code’s Article 300, which makes publicly disrespecting the Turkish flag an offense that carries a jail term of up to three years.