Turkey's first nudist hotel plan hits hitch !

By Jonathan Head BBC News, Istanbul

Guests can go au naturel around the pool

What was billed as the Muslim world's first nudist hotel has been forced to close, just six days after it opened.

It was shut after a local authority inspection which found that one of the balconies did not conform to the architect's drawings.

The first 12 sparsely-clad guests at the 64-room resort in Datca on the Turkish Riviera have had to be moved to more conventional accommodation.

The hotel owner said he hoped to modify the balcony and re-open by Wednesday.

Entrepreneur Ahmed Kosar, a 15-year veteran of the Turkish tourism industry, told the BBC that he was always looking for new niches to exploit in the $20bn (£13.6bn) business, and that a number of European clients at his other hotels had expressed an interest in nudism.

The resort was constructed in a quiet spot on the Datca peninsula, east of the popular resort of Marmaris.

It offers guests the opportunity to bare all around the pool, or to take a special shuttle bus to a private beach where nudity is tolerated.

Mr Kosar said he was campaigning to re-open the hotel, and argued that many other hotels in the area have been allowed to continue operating despite not getting some of the many different licences required in Turkey.

It took him two years to build, and he said there were no objections from the local inhabitants, provided the naked tourists confined themselves to the grounds of the resort and the private beach.

The hotel is only open to foreigners - Turks are not allowed to stay - and the staff, nearly all male, keep their clothes on.

Mr Kosar would not be drawn on the subject of whether officials from the governing AK Party were behind the closure - the party is frequently accused of quietly implementing a conservative Muslim agenda in many parts of Turkey.

But he said that if his project continued to be blocked, he would consider moving it to another country like Croatia or northern Cyprus.

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