not turn...
never turn a piercing, cartilage or otherwise.
All it does is disrupt the healing process, make it more vulnerable to infections, and take longer to fully heal.
This is how it works.
Your body notices the foreign object you have just slammed into it, and automatically wants to get rid of it. It starts with the inflamatory response. This is where the location of the piercing swells up and gets red and warm. The swelling is a natural response, which typically pushes out foreign objects such as splinters. Since the jewelery is fastened in however, it wont get pushed out (usually).
After the body realizes it cannot push it out, it begins to heal itself around the jewelery. From the beginning it your body sends antibodies and white blood cells to kill any germs or bacteria that may be in the wound, but now that it isnt trying to push it out, it focuses its attention to that.
After the cleaning process is done, the body begins to grow the connective tissue cells around the piercing, creating a "scar" so to speak around the jewelery.
Once the connective tissue is fully formed, the piercing is fully healed, and it is safe to remove the jewelry, play with the piercing, and change the jewelry.
Turning the jewelry disrupts this process, touching it gets germs into the wound, causing more cleaning time, and turning it breaks the connective tissue, which in turn causes the body to sense the distress and register the jewelry as a NEW foreign object, and starts the process back at the inflamatory response, turn the few month process into a cycle that can end up lasting years.
long story short....turning the jewelry confuses the immune system and makes it think you are piercing it over and over again, therefore starting the entire healing process over again.