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reThe new edition of the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” will not appear until Wednesday. But since the magazine published the new cover in advance on Twitter and Instagram on Tuesday night, it has been assumed that the tensions between NATO partners France and Turkey will not be resolved soon. Rather, thanks to “Charlie Hebdo”, the next level of threat escalation.
His new cartoon shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sitting on the couch in white underwear and showing the buttocks of a veiled and made-up woman. The woman carries a tray with glasses, both figures seem to be having fun. “Erdogan: It’s a lot of fun in private,” is the margin. And on Erdogan’s sandwich: “Ooh! The profit!”
In early October, French President Emmanuel Macron had already declared war on what he said was “Islamist separatism” that was spreading in France. Following the assassination of teacher Samuel Paty in mid-October, he announced a tough policy against Islamism. Erdogan then accused Macron of “Islamophobia” and recommended that he seek psychological treatment. On Monday Erdogan added: “Just as France is asking not to buy Turkish products, now I am appealing to my people: just don’t pay attention to French brands, don’t buy them.” In fact, there has been no call for a boycott from the French before or after. Erdogan has never mentioned the murder of Samuel Paty with a single syllable.
The teacher from the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine had drawn the ire of devout Muslim parents because he had broached the subject of freedom of expression in school lessons and, among other things, discussed the Muhammad cartoons from “Charlie Hebdo.” A schoolgirl’s father later posted several videos online and asked for Paty to be detained.
The reaction of “Charlie Hebdo” to the Franco-Turkish conflict is more or less what you would expect from the satirical magazine: funny, crude on the edge of bad taste and also a bit surprising.
Less surprising, however, were the Turkish government media, which delivered the first reports on Tuesday night: there is talk of a “disgusting attack” against President Erdogan, the cartoon is described as “vile” and “scandalous” . The “Sabah” newspaper, the flagship of the government press, writes that it was only President Macron who encouraged the magazine to do this with its “attacks on Islam.” The cartoon itself is either not seen at all in government media or is just pixelated.
That night, Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, spoke on Twitter: “The fascist wing of the West and its representatives among us are attacking our president in an immoral way,” he wrote. “You think you can dissuade our president from his path this way. But our president will continue to be the voice of the world’s conscience. Turkey will gain strength, fascism and fascists will lose. “
The Turkish Deputy Minister of Culture, Serdar Cam, put it in a more vulgar way: “They are bastards,” he also wrote on Twitter in French to “Charlie Hebdo.” And: “They are sons of bitches.”
It remains to be seen how the Turkish reaction will turn out. In any case, Turkey cannot show the French ambassador in Ankara: the French Foreign Ministry has already withdrawn him. Given that Erdogan is known not only as a resentful character, but also because the conflict is escalating for political reasons, it would not be surprising if the Turkish response this time is not diplomatic. The French Foreign Ministry on Monday already asked citizens living in Turkey and other Islamic countries to be particularly careful.
On the other hand, critics of the Turkish government wrote in initial reactions that Erdogan’s foreseeable further escalation was on guard. By general opinion, he only seeks the dispute with Macron to divert attention from the devastating economic crisis, which has been exacerbated by the Corona crisis. Also for this reason, the Turkish media criticizing the government is likely to refrain from this topic and, of course, because it doesn’t take much imagination to imagine what threatens anyone who dares to reprint this cartoon in Turkey, even with documentary purposes.
Since Erdogan took office as president in August 2014 until March this year, more than 100,000 preliminary investigations were opened in Turkey for “insulting the president,” and in more than 30,000 cases there were legal proceedings that repeatedly ended in prison. At least since the dispute over the satirist Jan Böhmermann’s “humiliating poem” in the spring of 2016, the Turkish president’s sensibilities have also been known in Germany.
Politicians in Turkey have not always been so humorless
Turkish politicians have not always been so humorless. This shows the handling of the “Girgir”. This satirical magazine, somewhat reminiscent of “Charlie Hebdo” in form and content, was founded in 1972 and reached a sold circulation of half a million weekly copies in the 1980s, when the aftermath of the 1980 military coup was still continuing. One of his favorite motives was the then Conservative-Liberal head of government and later President Turgut Özal. “Girgir” showed him in all possible poses, also with a mason neckline. Özal never filed a criminal complaint, but he had covers that he considered particularly successful, framed and decorated with them.
Erdogan, on the other hand, took action against the cartoonist of “Girgir’s” successor “Penguen” in 2005. After the terrorist attack on “Charlie Hebdo” in January 2016, then-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu participated in the memorial service in Paris. In Turkey, however, attempts were made to prevent the distribution of Muhammad cartoons. Journalist Hikmet Cetinkaya and journalist Ceyda Karan were sentenced to two years in prison for “sedition” for reprinting some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in their Cumhuriyet newspaper columns in response to the Paris attack. The Court of Cassation is currently negotiating the case in a third and decisive instance.
On the other hand, those who are on the side of the Turkish government enjoy unlimited freedom. For example, the satirical magazine “Misvak”, affiliated with the AKP. On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before “Charlie Hebdo,” the newspaper tweeted a cartoon that showed Emmanuel Macron in baby diapers in the arms of a skeletonized woman, a reference to his wife Brigitte, who is 25 years older than the French president. In the drawing, Emmanuel Macron sucks a bottle with the inscription “Hate”, on the edge of the image is the word “Freedom of opinion”. Until now no one in France has bothered about it.
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