ALBAWABA - A Turkish magazine has landed in the middle of a big debate after sharing a controversial cartoon of Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Moses. Clashes erupted between police and protesters in Istanbul on Monday as people called the cartoon 'offensive'.
According to local media, satirical LeMan magazine editors shared a cartoon depicting both Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Moses, triggering widespread anger. In return, Istanbul's chief prosecutor ordered the arrest of the editors, saying they "publicly insulted religious values".
Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya posted on X that the Istanbul police had arrested the cartoonist responsible for the cartoon, the magazine's graphic designer, the editor-in-chief of the magazine and other workers.
He shared a video of one of the arrest operations and wrote: "By our security forces, the person named A. Y., the Institutional Director of the magazine that dared to draw our Prophet (PBUH), has also been apprehended and taken into custody."
Turks launched the hashtags "#lemandergisikapatılsın and #lemankapatılsın" [which mean close Leman], calling to shut down the Turkish magazine over its latest cartoon.
What was the Turkish magazine's cartoon?
A photo of the cartoon was shared on social media, showing a black-and-white copy of the magazine of two characters hovering in the skies over a city which is being attacked with bombs.
The cartoon read: "Salam aleikum, I'm Muhammad," with the other who replies, "Aleikum salam, I'm Musa."
A video was shared on X of a man climbing the building of the Turkish magazine holding a black flag with the sentence "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah".
How did the Turkish magazine respond?
AFP reported after a phone call with the magazine's editor-in-chief, Tuncay Akgun, that the cartoon had been misinterpreted and was "not a caricature of Prophet Muhammad".
"In this work, the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Muhammad. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Muhammad," Tuncay Akgun stressed, maintaining that the cartoon had "nothing to do with Prophet Muhammad.
He added: "We would never take such a risk."
