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Ilkim Buke-Okyar
mandate regime. The image of the Arab came to epitomize the distinction from the
uncivilized past that was an essential element of Ottoman heritage.
Turkish cartoon space projected the Arab Other in two time frames. One is
from 1923 to 1927, where the cartoonists as observers and contributors to the
nation-building process drew Arabs who were engaged in a similar project: seeking
national recognition against their mandate rulers. This period covers the Mosul
question (1923-1926); the struggle between King Hussein and ibn Saud over He¬
jaz (1924); the Yazidi rebellion of 1926 near the Turkish border; the Syrian revolt
against the mandatory French government (1925-1926); and the Moroccan revolt
in North Africa. Concerning all of these events, the Arab figures were covered in
Turkish cartoons (Fig. 7).
‘The second time frame is from 1936 to 1939, when the Turkish nation-build¬
ing project reached its peak, an exclusively Turkish nation was imagined, and iden¬
tity building through othering became even more apparent. The depiction of Arabs
had been used in between these years with regard to the invasion of Habes (Ethio¬
pia, 1936) and the reappearance of blacks (previously understood to be a type of
Arab), this time as colonized Africans; the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936); and
finally the Hatay (Alexandretta) dispute between France and Turkey (1936-1939).
Out of the multiple stereotypes of Arab behaviour throughout the Ottoman
experience, four emerged to dominate the representation of Arabs in the first period
of the Turkish republican cartoon sphere under the influences of these events: the
fiercely violent and cruel behaviour of Arabs, especially the puppet leaders of the
post-Ottoman Arab provinces; the physical and mental sloth and indolence of the
Arab; the uncivilized nature of Arabs and their struggle with progress over the
forces of barbarism; and the greed, or heightened aspiration for financial gain.
In the 1930s, a new form of Arab representation was evident in most repub¬
lican cartoons whenever the subject of Arabs came up in Turkish political life as
accompanying to the previous ones. The four magnified features of “white” (ak)
Arabs were attached to the physiognomy of “black” (kara) Arabs, who had been at¬
tributed and identified with uncivilized savages that resembled monstrous ape-like
creatures, menacing law, order, and civilized values. The cartoonist adopting the
racial theories of colonial discourse projected a hybrid image of the Arab in relation
to the Turks; that is, the Turks played the role of the pure race standing at the top of
the pyramid, in opposition to white Arabs, who held the role of the Semitic races,
and black Arabs, of “African type”, who held the lowest rank (Fig. 8).
The depiction of the unappreciated Other as an animal-like, or beastly, figure
had already been used for ridicule as early as the nineteenth century in Ottoman
satire mostly to discredit the European and later mandate powers. On the other
hand, until the 1930s, the Arabs of the Middle East and north Africa were depicted
in cartoons in stereotypical outfits (with keffiyes and garb), ethnically indistinguish¬
able. One would be unable to differentiate between the Middle East’s various cul¬
tural or ethnic groups just by looking at the illustrations without reading the titles