No Laughing Matter: Visualizing Turkey's Ergenekon in Political Cartoons

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Acknowledgements

This article is based partly on my research conducted in the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu, Estonia, in the spring of 2011. I would like to thank the department, particularly Andreas Ventsel, Katre Väli, Gleb Netchvolodov and the participants at my Mass Media and Communication Models Seminar for general comments, suggestions, and criticisms. I am grateful to Tim Jacoby and Ali Balcı for their valuable support. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹ Necati Polat (2011) The Anti-Coup Trials in Turkey: What Exactly is Going On?, Mediterranean Politics, 16(1), p. 213.

² For an analysis of differing media accounts on the case, see Ali Balci (2010) A Trajectory of Competing Narratives: The Turkish Media Debate Ergenekon, Mediterranean Quarterly, 21(1), pp. 81–99; see also Daniella Kuzmanovic's article in this issue.

³ Josh Greenberg (2002) Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons: A Critical Analysis of Visual Discourse, Canadian Journal of Sociological Review, 39(2), pp. 181–198.

⁷ Greenberg, Framing and Temporality, p. 185.

⁴ Ellen Giarelli & Lorraine Tulman (2003) Methodological Issues in the Use of Published Cartoons as Data, Qualitative Health Research, 13(7), p. 946.

⁵ Ernst Hans Gombrich (1971) The Cartoonist's Armoury, in: Ernst Hans Gombrich (ed.) Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art, 2^nd ed., pp. 127–142 (London: Phaidon).

⁶ Scott Vokey (2000) Inspiration for Insurrection or Harmless Humour? Class and Politics in the Editorial Cartoons of Three Toronto Newspapers during the Early 1930s, Labour/Le Travail, 45(Spring), p. 143.

⁸ Ray Morris (1993) Visual Rhetoric in Political Cartoons: A Structuralist Approach, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 8(3), pp. 198–202.

⁹ Ray Morris (1993) Visual Rhetoric in Political Cartoons: A Structuralist Approach, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, p. 198.

¹⁰ Ray Morris (1993) Visual Rhetoric in Political Cartoons: A Structuralist Approach, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, p. 199.

¹¹ E. H. Buell & M. Maus (1988) Is the Pen Mightier than the Word? Editorial Cartoons and 1988 Presidential Nominating Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, 21(4), pp. 847–859.

¹² Morris, Visual Rhetoric, pp. 195–210.

¹³ Norman Carroll (1996) A Note on Film Metaphor, Journal of Pragmatics, 26(1), pp. 809–822; and Charles Forceville (1994) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertisements, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 9(1) pp. 1–29.

¹⁴ Bahaa-Eddin M. Mazid (2008) Cowboy and Misanthrope: A Critical (Discourse) Analysis of Bush and bin Laden Cartoons, Discourse and Communication, 2(4), pp. 433–457; see also George Lakoff & Mark Turner (1989) More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

¹⁵ Elizabeth El-Refaie (2003) Understanding Visual Metaphor: the Example of Newspaper Cartoons, Visual Communication, 2(1), p. 79.

¹⁶ Villy Tsakona (2009) Language and Image Interaction in Cartoons: Towards a Multimodal Theory of Humor, Journal of Pragmatics, 41(6), pp. 1172–1184.

¹⁷ Salvatore Attardo (2001) Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis (The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 22–27.

¹⁸ Norman L. Fairclough & Ruth Wodak (2011) Critical Discourse Analysis, in: Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.) Discourse Studies: a Multidisciplinary Introduction, vol. 2, 2nd ed., pp. 273–275 (London: Sage).

¹⁹ Teun A. Van Dijk (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis, in: Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen & Heidi Ehernberger Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, pp. 352–371 (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 353.

²⁰ Teun A. Van Dijk (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis, in: Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen & Heidi Ehernberger Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, p. 352.

²¹ Teun A. Van Dijk (2011) Discourse as Interaction in Society, in: Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, vol. 2, 2nd ed., pp. 1–37 (London: Sage), p. 33.

²² Gunter Kress & Theo Van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge); Gunter Kress & Theo Van Leeuwen (2002) Colour as a Semiotic Mode: Notes Towards a Grammar of Colour, Visual Communication, 1(3), pp. 343–369.

²³ Trevor Purvis & Alan Hunt (1993) Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology …, British Journal of Sociology, 44(3), p. 485.

²⁴ Greenberg, Framing and Temporality, p. 194.

²⁵ John C. Meyer (2000), Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication, Communication Theory, 10(3), pp. 310–331.

²⁶ John C. Meyer (2000), Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication, Communication Theory, pp. 326, 327.

²⁷ John C. Meyer (2000), Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication, Communication Theory, p. 325.

²⁸ Cf. John Morreal (1983) Taking Laughter Seriously, pp. 4–15 (Albany: State University of New York).

²⁹ Konrad Lorenz (2002) On Aggression (London: Routledge), p. 284.

³⁰ Jerry Palmer (1994) Taking Humor Seriously (London: Routledge), p. 94.

³¹ Jerry Palmer (1994) Taking Humor Seriously (London: Routledge), p. 131.

³² Patricia Gilmartin & Stanley D. Brunn (1998) The Representation of Women in Political Cartoons of the 1995 World Conference on Women, Women's Studies International Forum, 21(5), p. 536.

³³ Patricia Gilmartin & Stanley D. Brunn (1998) The Representation of Women in Political Cartoons of the 1995 World Conference on Women, Women's Studies International Forum, 21(5), p. 544.

³⁴ Patricia Gilmartin & Stanley D. Brunn (1998) The Representation of Women in Political Cartoons of the 1995 World Conference on Women, Women's Studies International Forum, 21(5), p. 16.

³⁵ Charles R. Gruner (1997) The Game Of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction), p. 9.

³⁶ Mahadev L. Apte (1985) Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach Ithaca (NY: Cornell University Press).

³⁷ Meyer, Humor as a Double-Edged Sword, p. 315.

³⁸ Meyer, Humor as a Double-Edged Sword

³⁹ Meyer, Humor as a Double-Edged Sword, p. 325.

⁴⁰ Ayseli Kutluata (1999) U.S. Image Reflected Through Cartoons in Turkish Newspapers, in: Yahya R. Kemalipour (ed.) Images of the U.S. Around the World: A Multicultural Perspective, pp. 97–101 (Albany: State University of New York),p. 88.

⁴¹ Tuncay Kardas (2009) Turkey: Secularism, Islam and EU, in: Stig Jarle Hansen, Atle Mesoy & Tuncay Kardas (eds.) The Borders of Islam: Exploring Samuel Huntington's Faultlines, from Al-Andalus to Virtual Ummah, pp. 191–210 (London: Hurst & New York: Columbia University Press).

⁴² Martina Warning & Tuncay Kardas (2011) The Impact of Changing Islamic Identity on Turkey's New Foreign Policy, Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 10(2-3), pp. 123–140; for an analysis of the change of civil-military relations in Turkey through foreign policy, see Ali Balcı and Tuncay Kardas (2012), The Changing Dynamics of Turkey's Relations with Israel: An Analysis of ‘Securitization’, Insight Turkey, 14(2), pp. 99–120.

⁴³ Inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic theologian Fethullah Gülen, the movement is a Turkey-based transnational civic society movement with investments mainly in the fields of education and finance. Its main objective is to foster an ethic in line with Max Weber's ‘worldly asceticism,’ an ‘activist pietism’ aiming at ‘the rationalization of social relationships,’ according to Elisabeth Özdalga (2000) Worldly Asceticism in Islamic Casting: Fethullah Gülen's Inspired Piety and Activism, Critique, 9(17), p. 87.

⁴⁴ Zaman is selling around 800,000 copies a day; Cumhuriyet is selling around 50,000 copies a day.

⁴⁵ One of the characters, Kral (the King) represents Turkey and stands for a timeless but naïve leadership who reflects the country's predicaments and contradictions in his deeds and words. He is next to nothing without Soytarı (the Clown)'s advice on political matters. Soytarı often fills the vacuum and sits in for the lack of leadership by doing his best to avert all the pending crises and divert all the King's critics. He has to walk a tight rope between people's never-ending demands and the conjectural and structural constraints inflicted on the King's rule by the country's literati (sometimes depicted as a sage) and the army (depicted as a big, fat executioner holding an axe), respectively.

⁴⁶ James K. Lively (1942) Propaganda Techniques of Civil War Cartoonists, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 6(1), p. 100.

⁴⁷ Andreas Ventsel (2009) Visualization of ‘People’ in Soviet Estonian public photographs of the Stalinist Era, Social Semiotics, 20(5), p. 597.

⁴⁸ William A. Gamson & David Stuart (1992) Media Discourse as a Symbolic Contest: The Bomb in Political Cartoons, Sociological Forum, 7(1), p. 64.

⁵⁰ Salvatore Attardo, Christian F. Hempelmann & Sara Di Maio (2002) Script Oppositions and Logical Mechanisms: Modeling Incongruities and their Resolutions, Humor, 15(1), pp. 3–46.

⁴⁹ Roland Barthes (1972) Mythologies (London: Cape).

⁵¹ Cihaner was the chief-prosecutor in the city of Erzincan and was detained for ‘abuse of power’ and for allegedly operating as a member of Ergenekon.

⁵² Polat, The Anti-Coup Trials in Turkey, p. 215.

⁵³ Balcı, Trajectory of Competing Narratives, passim.

⁵⁴ For similar popular discourses of justification of misconduct, see Michelangelo Guida (2008) The Sèvres Syndrome and ‘Komplo’ Theories in the Islamist and Secular Press, Turkish Studies, 9(1), pp. 37–52.

⁵⁵ Kardas, Turkey: Secularism, Islam and EU, passim.

⁵⁶ For an exploration of the significance of Turkey's War of Independence in making nationalist discourses, see Emrullah Uslu (2008) Ulusalcılık: The Neo-nationalist Resurgence in Turkey, Turkish Studies, 9(1), pp. 73–97.

⁵⁷ I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for drawing my attention to the less partisan cartoons.

⁵⁸ Tuncay Kardas (2011) Karikatür Krizinden Postmodern Devrimlere: Yeni Uluslararası İlişkileri Anlamak, Dördüncü Uluslararası İlişkiler Kongresi, 21 Mayıs 2011, Ilgaz, Türkiye [From the Cartoon Crisis to Postmodern Revolutions in the Middle East: Towards New International Relations, Paper Presented at the Fourth International Relations Studies and Education Congress].