119. Today in 1920s Turkey: 19 October 1927 (A Souvenir of the Revolution)

(Cartoon, Karagöz, 19 October 1927, no. 2044, page 1.)

Türkçe:
Türk dünyasının ölümle halas arasında geçirdiği müthiş zamanın hatırası.
Büyük Gazi harap Türk vatanına bir güneş gibi doğdu. Karanlıkta kalan ümitsiz millete can verdi, kan verdi, şan verdi.

English:
A souvenir of the devestating time the Turkish world experienced between death and salvation.
The great Gazi rose like the sun over the Turkish motherland. He gave life, blood, and glory to a hopeless nation that was left in the dark.

Comments
The present cartoon is layered in both meaning and imagery. The artist has projected a complex, albeit abridged, narrative weaving several years of events into one seamless composition. The imagery is straightforward and clearly legible to anyone in 1927 with a stronger memory than that of a goldfish. The cartoon, which covers the entire front page of the magazine (besides its masthead/nameplate), provides a visual summary of the post-WWI Allied occupation of Ottoman lands. It presents a bleak picture save for the large, luminous sun rising over the horizon, which indicates hope—foretelling a change that would swing the pendulum of fortune away from the occupying forces.

A colossal man thrusting a bayonet to the sky visually dominates the composition. He constitutes one of the many Turkish rendition of the classic John Bull character, who is a personification of the United Kingdom. Today in 1920s Turkey has witnessed a variety of John Bulls (see posts #50, #51, #76, and #84). Sometimes John Bull is represented wearing a scandalously short Scottish kilt by Turkish artists in order to effeminize and therefore insult British masculinity. As the most visible “enemy” in the composition the Englishman is shorthand for the Allied forces, especially the British presence in occupied Istanbul.

To be sure, Istanbul’s occupation was no laughing matter to the Istanbul-based press. Indeed, the entire cartoon is clearly set in Istanbul as it displays several visible monuments: two mosques dotting the silhouetted skyline and one of the gates at Istanbul’s walls situated somewhat in the foreground. In a sense, this gate is the beginning of the story of post-WWI occupation. Standing outside the gate is the last sultan, Mehmet VI (i.e., Vahdettin). He is depicted bending at the waist in a submissive pose with one hand held out and another hand tucking away his coat, as if to get it out of the way of the forward-marching John Bull. His specific gesture is familiar to any Turk: it reads buyurun! or “welcome!” from a mile away, essentially inviting John Bull to occupy Istanbul.

The final sultan was often framed in this way in the early Republican nationalist press. Like John Bull’s freakishly short kilt, it is an exaggeration or rather, outright falsity. Once the Allied occupation began across the Ottoman Empire the sultan was unable to act in any meaningful capacity because his capital city, Istanbul, was under very direct and suffocating occupation. This is why the nationalist War of Independence that followed was based in Anatolia and not Istanbul, the epicenter of occupation. Nevertheless, from 1920 to 1922 Turkey’s administration was bifurcated. War-related decisions and diplomatic negotiations were coming out of Ankara’s Grand National Assembly government while Istanbul’s sultanate remained an impotent, sitting duck. Thus, once the war was won, and a new state’s borders drawn, the sultanate was abolished by the nationalist government and the last sultan, Mehmet VI was required to leave the country’s soils aboard a British battleship in November of 1922. Unable to curate his own image from abroad, the final sultan’s impaired legacy was quickly transformed by the pro-Republican literati (and cartoonists!) into that of an internal enemy and traitor who collaborated with external foes. And the present image is one example of how such framing occurred.

The sun rising in the distance comprises the final piece of the puzzle. It bears the uncanny facial features of Turkey’s first President and war hero, “Gazi” Mustafa Kemal Pasha. As the leader of the nationalist resistance in Anatolia during occupation (1919-1922), Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) was often represented in cartoons as the sole victory of the War of Independence, which is what we are seeing here. The bayonet rays emitting out from the solar orb render explicit this symbolic relationship. According to this cartoon, he was the sun that illuminated Turkey’s future and drove out the unwelcome guests.

So what is the occasion for publishing such a cartoon, you may ask? The most significant thing happening in Turkey at this moment in history is by far the delivery of President Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s landmark speech, Nutuk. What is often referred to as his “marathon speech,” the entire work, which was later published in book format, was delivered by the President himself at the opening of the second Republican People’s Party congress over the course of six days. Beginning on October 15, 1927 the President read his account the War of Independence in six-hour installments before congress, dignitaries, and members of the press. Newspapers reported on the event with daily updates summarizing the the previous day’s speech. This cartoon is likely inspired by content or sentiments expressed by the President in the days leading up to its publication.

(Entire page, Karagöz, 19 October 1927, no. 2044, page 1.)