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Ilkim Buke-Okyar
Graphical or visual discourse is one of the platforms on which the cultural codes
have been repeatedly produced through symbols.
Ultimately figments of the imagination, such perceptions reside in individual
human psyches and it is never easy to tease them out completely in historical re¬
search. These figments are constituted from social and intellectual inputs that be¬
come available through means of various persuasions, and they produce an endur¬
ing synthesis in decoding our surroundings. Perceptions are transferred through
“the concepts by which the experience is organized communicated and proceed
from the received cultural scheme” and continuously reproduce its cultural codes
(Sahlins 1987: 151-152).
Among the available means of graphical persuasion, political cartooning has
been a powerful one ever since it was employed as part of news commentary in
early nineteenth century Europe. The edited volume of Hill and Helmers (2012)
and the taxonomic study of Medhurst and De Sousa (1981) provide powerful il¬
lustrations of the important role played by political cartoons in establishing the
connection between the visual images and persuasion.
Since the initiation of Zanzimat reforms, the dilemma of the achievement of
a balance between the materiality, in another word, “modernity”, of Europe and
the inefficacy of the Ottoman governmental system fostered the need to compete
with the Europeans while staying close to them. They were the ones to whom Turks
compared themselves and against whom they created their national image. Arabs,
on the other hand, represented everything that the Ottoman Empire in its demise
and, later, the new republic in its birth, would want to seclude itself from in its
journey to become a muasır medeniyet (‘contemporary civilization‘).
The anti-Arab secularist spirit of the new Turkish nationalism in the process
of creating a new identity was imagined in terms of the nineteenth century con¬
cept of “civilization”. It expressed itself openly and violently in the cartoons of the
early republican period. In the process of nation building, intellectuals turned away
from Ottomanism and Islamism and began to seek ways to define and promote
Turkishness through every possible means. They deemed cultural transformation
a political strategy necessary for what they believed to be a progression towards
inclusion in the “family of civilized nations”. This process included appropriation
and adaptation of the meanings and definitions in Turkish cultural memory and
transforming its structure through utilizing related discourses in order to maintain
a favourable position. Political cartoon space provided an alternative ground for
the implementation of such discourses, especially employing the image of the Arab
Other inscribed in Turkish national memory and modifying it.
The historical imagery of the Arab Other in the cartoons could be sorted out
into images of people, particularly in illustrations that depicted aspects of the char¬
acter of Arab people; images of space, particularly in illustrations that depicted the
region's physical landscape and its cultural features; and images of time, particularly
in the temporal intersection that occurs in an illustration when the past meets the