Cartoon of Mohammed “blasphemous”, four cartoonists arrested in Türkiye: Erdogan’s repression is getting stronger

The secular Turkey of Atatürk, the first president of the Turkish Republic and considered the “father” of modern Turkey, has long been a distant memory under the pressure of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his policies of conservative Islamization of the country.

But the latest episode from Istanbul is pushing the country towards an even more evident drift: last night the Turkish police arrested four cartoonists from the satirical magazine LeMan . They are guilty, as explained on X by the Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya , who published four videos showing police officers handcuffing and dragging the cartoonists out of their homes, of having drawn a “vile” and blasphemous cartoon in the June 26 issue of the magazine.

Emniyet güçlerimiz tarafından, Peygamber Efendimizi (SAV) çizme hadsizliğini yapan derginin Müessese Müdürü AY adlı şahıs da yakalanarak gözaltına alındı. pic.twitter.com/JR2IraE11U

— Ali Yerlikaya (@AliYerlikaya) June 30, 2025

The Istanbul prosecutor's office ordered the seizure of the offending edition and initiated proceedings to block the magazine's social media accounts.

The cartoon shows a character named Muhammad shaking hands with Moses, while missiles appear behind them, in a scene reminiscent of recent bombings between Iran and Israel. The magazine, founded in 1991 and periodically targeted by the Turkish right and Islamic conservatives , including for its support of French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 following the terrorist attack in Paris that killed 12 people, apologized to readers but also claimed that the cartoon in question was deliberately misinterpreted.

The aim of Dogan Pehlevan , one of the cartoonists arrested by the police, was to show “the suffering of a Muslim killed in Israeli attacks” and not to offend Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking to Agence France-Presse, LeMan editor-in-chief Tuncay Akgun explained that the targeted cartoon “is not at all a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad,” noting that there are more than 200 million people in the Islamic world with the name Muhammad.

These justifications were not enough for the groups of Islamic conservatives who attempted to attack the editorial offices of LeMan during the night : the attackers smashed the windows of the building that houses the magazine's headquarters with stones and sticks, before the police intervened to stop them.

Leman'ın önünde toplanan kalabalık group, güvenlik güçlerine saldırı gerçekleştiriyor. Barışçıl protest yasal haktır. Fakat burada polise ve vatandaşa açık bir şiddet söz konusu. Saraçhane mitinglerinde 18-24 yaş arası gençler gözaltına alınmıştı. Bu şahıslar hakkında da gözaltı… pic.twitter.com/oW2s5txkmU

— Av. Cemil Çiçek (@avcemilcicek71) June 30, 2025

As Ansa recalls, this is not the first time that satirical magazines have been attacked in Turkey. In 2012, some people set fire to the headquarters of Penguen , which closed in recent years, while in 2011 Bahadir Baruter , a well-known satirical author, was tried for a caricature that made fun of religion, accused of "insulting religious values". In 2015, two journalists from the daily Cumhuriyet, Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya , ended up at the center of a legal proceeding for having published next to their signatures in their editorials the cover of the weekly Charlie Hebdo that came out in France after the attack on the French magazine claimed by Al Qaeda.