{"id":92595,"date":"2012-12-24T11:49:13","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T11:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uncut.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=8704"},"modified":"2012-12-24T11:49:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T11:49:13","slug":"turkey-comics-offence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=92595","title":{"rendered":"As Turkey lifts ban against hundreds of books, we discover how comic Captain Miki offended the Turkish state"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judging by sales figures, Turkish readers love comics magazines<\/a> and graphic novels, but the political and military leaders of the country have had little patience for them, an examination of Turkey\u2019s banned books revealed last month.<\/p>\n

On 5 January 2013, \u00a0the Turkish government will lift bans against\u00a0453 books and 645 periodicals blacklisted over a 63 year period. It is part of a package of judicial reforms that will also offer a conditional pardon for certain media and freedom of expression offences and secure greater free expression in the publishing field.<\/p>\n

\"\"When Turkish journalists got hold of the astonishing list<\/a>\u00a0of banned books at the end of November, a surprise awaited them. Amid titles of works by \u201cusual suspects\u201d — Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin; Turkish authors Naz\u0131m Hikmet and Aziz Nesin; and the theologian Said Nurs\u00ee — the figure of Captain Miki (or \u201cTommiks\u201d as he is known here) made an unexpected appearance. One episode among the adventures of the Italian hero, who has been popular with Turkish readers since the 1950s, was banned for more than 52 years, they learned.<\/p>\n

So how exactly did Captain Miki offend Turkish state? The Prosecutor\u2019s report revealed that a single issue of Captain Miki\u2019s adventures was banned in 1961, months after the 27 May 1960 military coup took place. The generals, who hung a democratically elected prime minister the same year, accused Captain Miki of having encouraged laziness and a \u201cspirit of adventurousness\u201d among Turkish people.<\/p>\n

When I called MK Perker, one of Turkey\u2019s most prolific comic book authors, to ask about Captain Miki\u2019s tragic fate, he didn\u2019t sound much surprised. In 2011, Perker and a group of famous Turkish comic writers published Harakiri, a high quality comics magazine which was fined the Turkish equivalent of 50,000 GBP after putting out only two issues. They were accused of precisely the same offence: Encouraging laziness and a spirit of adventurousness among Turkish people.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people spy on comics magazines,\u201d he said, \u201cand then complain to prosecutors about certain images they find disagreeable. These are mostly random events. You can\u2019t foresee them. A magazine publishes content similar to ours and nothing happens. But just because someone picks on you and files a complaint, you end up getting in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perker, whose comics appear weekly in the Sunday supplements of two national newspapers, said he regularly feels the need to self-censor his own work. \u201cFor my newspaper pieces, I need to be cautious,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in places like Harakiri I feel more free. We don\u2019t have a boss at the magazine. We don\u2019t have to show our work to an editor. We don\u2019t run any advertisement so there is no fear of ever losing our artistic independence. Harakiri is like HBO<\/a>\u00a0[the American cable television network] when compared to comic sections of national newspapers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the 50,000 GBP fine in 2011 putting an end to his happy days of artistic independence, Perker and his friends put out a third issue earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Credit: Habert\u00fcrk<\/p><\/div>\n

Perker, whose works appeared in the New Yorker, Mad Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and Heavy Metal among others, began his career at the Turkish cartoon magazine G\u0131rg\u0131r, which used to sell half a million copies in its heyday during the 1970s. I asked Perker whether things got better in terms of freedom of expression since his days in G\u0131rg\u0131r.<\/p>\n

\u201cCensorship always existed in Turkey,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a very consistent phenomenon. After the 12 September 1980 coup d’\u00e9tat, G\u0131rg\u0131r was shut down by the military junta. Markopa\u015fa, the weekly satirical magazine published by the Turkish author Sabahattin Ali, was closed numerous times. Its publishers had to sell the magazine personally on streets because there was simply no other way to distribute it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In Ottoman times, under rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, cartoonists and comic writers faced similar problems. Perker points out that when the Sultan\u2019s pointed nose became a subject of cartoons, a ban was issued against newspapers running such images. He says:<\/p>\n

The Sultan\u2019s nose became a metaphor for government. Depictions of all pointed noses were outlawed. Comic magazine publishers had to go to Geneva in order to continue their publishing operations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Perker, despite the pressures on their activities, the influence of comic magazines continue to be a force in Turkey\u2019s cultural life. The political response to weekly comic magazines has even become a subject for debate in government.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sued Penguen magazine<\/a> when it\u00a0published a cartoon that depicted him as an elephant, giraffe, monkey, camel, frog, snake, cow and duck.\u00a0Erdogan lost the case on free expression grounds.\u00a0While some parliamentarians sue cartoonists in courts,\u00a0others, like the deputy prime minister B\u00fclent Ar\u0131n\u00e7<\/a>\u00a0said he wanted all cases against cartoonists dropped and \u00a0expressed his support in 2010.<\/p>\n

This is a feeling shared by K\u00fcr\u015fat Kayra<\/a>, the Ankara prosecutor who prepared the legal documents that lifted bans placed on hundreds of books, newspapers and periodicals:<\/p>\n

If we don’t acknowledge that the right to freedom of expression is a\u00a0fundamental human right, then we won\u2019t be able to say \u2018the king is\u00a0naked!\u2019 when the occasion arises.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kaya Genc is a Turkish essayist and novelist. Follow him on Twitter: @kayagenc<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judging by sales figures, Turkish readers love comics magazines and graphic novels, but the political and military leaders of the country have had little patience for them, an examination of Turkey\u2019s banned books revealed last month. On 5 January 2013, \u00a0the Turkish government will lift bans against\u00a0453 books and 645 periodicals blacklisted over a 63 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[55],"tags":[4513,13688,103,13107,571,1471,13689,443],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}