French cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon about the earthquake in Turkey continues to receive negative criticism from all over the world.
Not only Turkish society but especially European nations and other countries reacted to this caricature.
On February 6, Turkey was shaken by two separate earthquakes, the center of which was Kahramanmaraş. This earthquake is shown as the biggest earthquake disaster in Turkey’s modern history.
Although the death toll has been expressed as 3-5 thousand until now, the fault line has been effective in 10 different provinces with a total population of 13 million, and tens of thousands of people are waiting to be rescued under the rubble in the cold winter conditions.
The image published by Charlie Hebdo on the same day of the earthquake with the title «Cartoon of the Day» reads «Earthquake in Turkiye. Even, no need to send tanks.»
Charlie Hebdo is known for its sharp-tongued and sarcastic approach. Many of the cartoons they made in the past angered the target audience.
As such, publishing a caricature in this way about an event in which thousands of people lost their lives, were injured, and suffered, naturally drew a great reaction from all over the world.
Founder of Linguo platform teacher and enterpreneur Mohamed Hassissi who got 250 thousand followwers on Instagram said , «A big earhquake hit a country. And thousands of innocent people die including children and probably thousands of people will die cause they’re under the rubble. Only people sick at heart find it funny and redicule that unfortunate. That’s what French magazine Charlie Hebdo did.»
Hassissi said that Charlie Hebdo used to do the same things before, refering the «hatred caricatures» about Prophet Mohammed in 2015.
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«Modern barbarians! Fascist humor»
While CNN Türk, one of Turkey’s leading news channels, evaluated this cartoon as a scandal, Turkish Presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın reacted sharply and said, «Modern barbarians! Drown in your grudge and hatred.»
Algerian-French journalist Khaled Sid Mohand and Moroccan-French academic doctor Yannis Mahil evaluated the Turkiye cartoon, which was served by Charlie Hebdo with the «drawing of the day» note, as «fascist humor».
Mohand stated that he found it fascist to serve such a cartoon after an earthquake that killed thousands of people, regardless of its aims, and said, «This so-called humor is the humor of the far right, it is a fascist humor. Muslims have become Charlie Hebdo’s obsession in the last 25 years. «
French academic Yannis Mahil noted that when «fanaticism and sarcasm» reached an advanced level, humor turned into hate speech.
«Charlie Hebdo’s target is mostly Muslims, immigrants, Africans and Asians. The magazine knows exactly who to target and how to hide its hatred behind free speech and humor.» said Mahil.
However, this is not Charlie Hebdo’s first incident. The French magazine made a controversial drawing for an earthquake that occurred in Italy in 2016 and compared the earthquake victims to Italy’s famous lasagna dish.
Charlie Hebdo, which previously published insulting cartoons against the Prophet Muhammad, this time cartoonized the earthquakes in Turkey, in which thousands of people lost their lives, with hate speech.
About Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo was first published in France in 1960 as Hara-Kiri Hebdo. The magazine changed its name to Charlie Hebdo the following year. Charlie Hebdo, a left-anarchist-leaning magazine published on Wednesdays, ceased publication in 1981. However, it was re-published in 1992. After the cartoons they published about the prophet Muhammad, some extreme groups attacked the magazine building on January 7, 2015, in which 11 people lost their lives.
