Jailed cartoons of Turkey
Creative cartoonists in Turkey employ different forms of graphic protest to deftly criticize Erdogan and his policies.
If you have been following the Turkey Pulse of Al-Monitor you must know that Turkey’s ruling party Justice and Development Party (AKP) should be applauded for its resistance to any and every form of political opposition. One must give credit where credit is due, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his crew deserve kudos for competing in every field, from fashion to media, with the "establishment," the "secular," "white Turks," whomever you would like to name — that is, anyone who is not an AKP partisan.
There is, however, one field they have yet to conquer: Satire. AKP cannot compete with political cartoons. Indeed, my 10-year-old son brought this fact to my attention by saying, "Who are the pro-AKP caricaturists?" There was only one name that came to my mind: Salih Memecan, whose wife is a longtime MP from AKP. Considering that I might be biased, I asked a close friend, who is an official member of AKP, to do a survey. She reviewed humor magazines on sale for November and came back saying, "It is disgraceful. These are all Islamophobic AKP-haters."
