Turkey's Prophet Muhammad cartoon row is an ugly sign of the times

Spectator

3 days ago

Hundreds of Turkish Islamists have attacked a satirical magazine after claiming that it published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Protestors chanted 'tooth for tooth, blood for blood, revenge, revenge' outside the office of LeMan, which denied that the image was of Muhammad. Police quickly intervened, erecting barricades and firing pepper spray. But instead of cracking down further on the Islamists, the Turkish authorities appear to now be targeting the journalists. Four employees of the magazine have been arrested and the chief public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into claims that the cartoon 'publicly insult(ed) religious values'.
I was in the area when the attack unfolded yesterday in Istanbul's Beyoglu district. Passers by, angered by 'God is great' chants and insults at Turkey's sacred secularism, challenged the demonstrators, shouting, 'This is the Turkish Republic, you can't call for sharia!' The protestors then turned on these people before the police timidly stepped in.
As the night progressed, hundreds more furious Islamists flocked to the area. The main slogans were 'War, jihad, martyrdom', 'The infidel LeMan will answer', and 'Sharia shall come, Kemalism will end', referring to the secular ideology of the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Some individuals even openly screamed slurs at the police officers' mothers – another sacred taboo that very few would dare to openly do.
The riot police held the line, occasionally using pepper spray when protestors tried to break through. But it was by far the most timid response I have ever seen from the Turkish police in such situations during all the protests I have attended over the years. Had it been any other political group, whether Kurds, leftists, feminists, or republicans, the arrests would no doubt have been in the hundreds, with the organisers rounded up at dawn from their bedrooms by the counter-terrorism forces.
Of course, this isn't to say the police have sat on their hands. Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya released a series of videos showing officers roughly handcuffing and dragging out of their homes the caricaturist and the magazine's aging managers. 'I repeat once again: These blasphemers will be held accountable before the law,' the minister said. But not a word on those who attacked his police officers the same night and called for the exile and death of 'infidels'.
Just the day before this ugly event, a group of gay people tried to hold the annual Istanbul Pride march. The official response was starkly different to what happened outside LeMan. For the few dozen protesters who gathered, the police mobilised in their thousands, shutting down two neighbourhoods, and arresting the attendees.
Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the so-called Sivas massacre. It occurred in 1993 when a violent Islamist mob set fire to a hotel in Sivas where leftist intellectuals were holding a conference – mostly from the Alevi religious minority. The police stood back as 35 people were burned alive. On the old VHS footage of the incident, one can hear the same slogans and see similar faces as yesterday in Istanbul.
Another incident many are now drawing parallels with is the Charlie Hebdo attack. In 2015, two al-Qaeda gunmen stormed the French satirical magazine's office in Paris, killing 12 people. The attackers targeted the magazine for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
No doubt alive to the dangers, LeMan quickly decided to back down. 'This caricature is not a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name),' they tweeted. An unconvincing argument that the image just portrayed a regular Muslim called Muhammad, of whom there are 200 million in the world, was put forward. Even this is unlikely to save the magazine from being shut down.
Religious values and the image of the Prophet Muhammad – who is not supposed to be depicted – are highly sacred in Turkish society. But so was the secular nationalist heritage of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The response from the authorities yesterday and the lack of a 'Je suis LeMan' movement today show that dynamics are slowly but steadily shifting in Turkey.