The magazine LeMan is under fire from government, state, and Islamists in Turkey—on account of an illustration perceived as depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
A picture in the magazine depicts two winged characters floating above a city under siege. One character says, “Peace be upon you, I’m Muhammad,” while the other replies, “Peace be upon you, I’m Musa” (Moses in Turkish). The cartoon’s fashionable hostility to Israel has not spared it from the threat of Islamist violence.
Announcing that LeMan’s editor-in-chief, the graphic designer, institutional director, and cartoonist were in detention, Turkey’s interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, condemned the drawing as “shameless,” despite his own formal, constitutional allegiance to a unitary nation-state based on secular democratic principles.
An Islamist mob gathered outside the magazine’s Istanbul offices, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan weighed in, calling the illustration a “vile provocation.” LeMan denied its cartoon caricatured Muhammad, posting on X that “the work does not refer to the Prophet Muhammed in any way.” (The widespread popularity of the name Muhammed for males could help to explain the choice, although the figure’s pairing with Musa/Moses brings to mind two Abrahamic prophets, whose depiction is forbidden in Islam.)
Riot police are reported to have used rubber bullets and tear gas on protestors in Istanbul. The protesters reportedly chanted “tooth for tooth, blood for blood, revenge, revenge.” Meanwhile, politicians within NATO and the European Union—of which Turkey is, respectively, a full and prospective member—have remained conspicuously silent on the issue, showing next to no solidarity with the arrested journalists.
