Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, has done something of an about-face in regards to cartoons, according to Today’s Zaman. Erdoğan is probably best known to the comics and book global community for trying to censor and sue cartoonists in Turkey (even best-selling novelists have suffered under repressive rules about ‘defaming’ the country or leaders, which hasn’t done much to help Turkey’s application to join the EU). Last summer he sued Mehmet Cagcag (as Tom reported) over a political cartoon which depicted the PM as a tick. This was not something new to Erdoğan, who had sued a number of cartoonists prior to this, although fortunately he lost those cases. Last December these kinds of actions prompted the Cartoon Foundation and the Turkish Bar Association to launch the Human Rights with Cartoons exhibition (proving once more that it is rarely a good idea for a politician to publicly argue with a cartoonist as they will only end up being made to look more ridiculous).
Now, ironically, Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party are employing the very medium they castigated to help in their current political campaign, borrowing from the old Lucky Luke strip, with Erdoğan as Luke (complete with horse Jolly Jumper), while opposition politicians are also employing cartoonists to rubbish Erdoğan’s party, including one cartoon showing Erdoğan and his son sailing away on a boat full of dollars, a reference to their alleged corruption. It seems that cartoons denigrating politicians (which is one of the finest uses of a cartoon in my opinion) are not popular with politicians in Turkey – unless they are commissioned by them to attack their opponents. No double standards there at all then. Shame the article had no examples of the Lucky Luke style cartoon.
Tue, Jul 10, 2007
Comics and cartoons