AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

TURKISH PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become perhaps the first world leader to issue a public statement about the iPhone 6.

It hasn’t been a great week for the new device, with #Bendgate and problems with an iOS 8 update dogging media coverage of Apple’s flagship.

And now international politicians are weighing in. Erdogan was cutting – saying it was much the same as its iPhone 5 predecessor.

Erdogan said that he had seen the lines snaking round an Apple sales shop in New York during his visit last week to attend the UN General Assembly.

But he said dismissively in a televised speech in Istanbul:

This brand brings out a new model pretty much every year. But in fact it (the iPhone 6) is not really different from last year’s version.

Christophe Ena Christophe Ena

Erdogan added: ”It is not the telephone that is being sold but the brand of the telephone.”

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Erdogan has been in the past notoriously hostile to new technologies. He is particularly antagonistic towards social media, even though some top government ministers are enthusiastic Twitter users.

We’re assuming for the moment that he wasn’t disappointed in the same way as these people.

© – AFP 2014

More: People are actually complaining that the iPhone 6 is ‘too big to watch porn discreetly’>