Etiket art

“I found as I grew up that there were things I did not like which were beyond my power to put right. I developed a dislike for governments. The only solution for me, I decided, was to draw”. So began the career of Tan Oral, one of Turkey’s most consistently popular cartoonists who this week received the Istanbul Journalists’ Association Award for his word. Although cartoonists in Turkey have faced restrictions, their work, by its nature is harder than writing for the authorities to pin down. “After the military coup on March 12 1971, two of my cartoons which appeared in a magazine “friends of the people” were indicted because they presented oppression. Those who conducted the investigation delivered the report saying because there was no writing it was impossible to establish a meaning and no legal proceedings were opened,” said Oral. After the subsequent coup in September 1980, Oral and his friends were conscious of the political atmosphere and were discreet in what they drew. “But I tried not to be disinterested or insensitive to the unpleasant things that were happening and not to compromise my own political views. I continued to draw with the idea that I was contributing to the democracy we hoped would return,” said Oral. “Humor is used for a reason. It has to be critical and must aim to change the world. Laughter comes from the pleasure of this undertaking. In the West comedy of the kind found in comics is just intended to make people laugh. Such publications are sold all around the world. There comics like this in Turkey, too. But cartoon magazines are published for defined reasons. Once such a magazine achieves its aim, it either changes its style, stops publication or is destroyed by the powers it wants to change. […]