Image by Arzu Geybullayeva, created using Canva Pro.
On July 2, Turkey commemorated the 32nd anniversary of the Madımak Massacre, in which a fundamentalist mob killed 33 intellectuals and artists – most of them Alevi, Turkey's largest religious minority – as well as two staff members of the Madımak Hotel in the country's Sivas province. Thousands marked the day by laying carnations at the site and renewing calls to transform the hotel into a museum as a poignant reminder of Turkey's history of religiously motivated violence.
In Istanbul just two days prior, a similarly charged crowd gathered outside the offices of LeMan, one of Turkey’s last remaining satirical magazines, driven by a cartoon published in its June 26 issue. Authorities claimed that the drawing – in which two figures they identified as Muhammad and Moses greet each other amid war-torn scenes alluding to the wars in Gaza and Iran – “openly insulted religious values.” This sparked a chain of events: protests, arrests, and criminal and financial investigations into LeMan and its staff.
On June 30, an extremist mob protested outside the magazine's Istanbul office chanting Sharia slogans, throwing stones and attempting forced entry. Mob members were left untouched while four of the magazine's staff were arrested.
A targeted campaign against LeMan
Despite government claims that the cartoon depicted prophets, LeMan's editorial team quickly refuted these accusations. In a June 30 tweet, and later in an interview with AFP, Editor-in-Chief Tuncay Akgün clarified that the cartoon had “nothing to do with prophet Muhammad,” but rather depicted a Muslim named Muhammad “killed in the bombardments of Israel.” Akgün stressed that “there are more than 200 million people in the Islamic world named Muhammad” and that the magazine “would never take such a risk.”
The LeMan team is acutely aware of the dangers it faces. In a 2016 interview with DW, Akgün noted that “there is hardly any law under which [the magazine hasn't] been prosecuted,” adding, “We've been imprisoned and received serious threats.” While he previously spoke of common charges like “disrespecting state leaders or officials,” nine years later, “publicly insulting religious values” has been added to the list.
Police arrested Ali Yavuz, a manager at LeMan; editor Zafer Aknar; cartoonist Doğan Pehlevan; and Cebrail Okçu, a graphic designer. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya shared videos of the operation, stating that the four were apprehended for “publicly insulting religious values” under Article 216 of the country's penal code. Authorities raided the office, seized copies of the June issue, and launched a financial probe into the magazine's funding. Meanwhile, the angry protesters who showed up outside the magazine's office, chanting slogans and attacking people at nearby bars and restaurants, went largely ignored by the police.
Journalist Ezgi Başaran suggested there was little likelihood of this escalation being “accidental.” In a personal analysis, she noted that the group behind the mob attack was an offshoot of the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front (IBDA-C), the same group responsible for the Sivas attack 32 years ago. “Though mostly dormant in recent years,” she wrote, “the group has a documented record of attacking secular institutions – bookstores, cinemas, newsrooms –particularly during the tumultuous 1990s.”
Among those interpreting the cartoon differently from the way in which LeMan intended was Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç, who tweeted, “No freedom grants the right to make sacred elements of a faith the subject of vulgar humor.” He promised “necessary legal action” and, on July 2, confirmed the arrest of all four staff members, with a warrant issued for two other team members who are currently abroad.
In stark contrast, the radical Islamist protesters faced no criminal proceedings. Başaran pointed out this impunity, stating, “That a crowd aligned with a banned militant group could gather unimpeded in central Istanbul speaks volumes. Obviously not about freedom of assembly, but about the regime’s selective toleration of gatherings. This is the same government that does not even allow a dozen people to assemble and protest, say, spoiled milk, fearing that any small grievance might crystallize into political opposition and pose a threat to the AKP’s rule.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan weighed in on the issue at a ruling Justice and Development Party Provincial Leaders meeting, labeling the cartoon a “vile provocation.” He declared, “The disrespect shown to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) by certain shameless individuals who lack the values, decency, and manners of this nation is absolutely unacceptable. Those who show insolence toward our Prophet and other prophets will be held accountable before the law.”
The international response was swift. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with organizations like Cartooning for Peace and Cartoonists Rights, issued a joint statement condemning the arrests as “a new attack on press freedom in Turkey.” RSF currently ranks Turkey 159th out of 180 countries in its Press Freedom Index.
Echoes of Madımak
The parallels between the LeMan incident and the 1993 Madımak Massacre are stark. In both cases, accusations of religious insult ignited mass outrage, culminating in violent mob action. At Madımak, the fury was sparked by claims of atheistic or anti-Islamic sentiment at the Pir Sultan Abdal Festival. In 2025, the trigger was a satirical cartoon that was either misunderstood or distorted as a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
At Madımak, the mob chanted “Sivas will be the grave of secularists” before setting the hotel ablaze. At LeMan, demonstrators chanted slogans like “Either they die, or we will die.” While the Madımak tragedy resulted in lethal violence, the LeMan incident escalated into state-backed repression, with police detaining staff and shuttering access to the magazine's platforms. In both instances, the mobs largely went unpunished.
In 1993, security forces passively watched the Madımak Hotel burn. In 2025, the Turkish government actively pursued criminal charges against LeMan staff while ignoring threats made by protesters. Police, who often use full force to disperse rights groups or citizens protesting social injustice, barely employed their usual arsenal of crowd dispersement methods against the extremist mob.
Regarding the Madımak massacre itself, 124 people were arrested in relation to the fire. In the seven-year trial process that followed, 33 individuals who were initially sentenced to death later had their sentences commuted to aggravated life imprisonment; 85 people received prison sentences ranging from two to 15 years; and 37 defendants were acquitted. On March 13, 2012, the Ankara 11th Heavy Penal Court controversially dropped all charges, citing the statute of limitations as per the prosecutor's demand.
The Madımak Massacre marked a terrifying rupture between religious conservatism and secular artistic expression. Now, the LeMan incident, playing out in a deeply polarized and digitally amplified society, suggests that the lines of that culture war remain intact. According to Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Lisel Hintz, “We can read the LeMan attack and the government’s handling of it as an escalation of the culture war Erdoğan has been waging as a way to vilify and delegitimize opposition writ large.”
While methods may have changed – Molotov cocktails swapped for court orders, mobs for media campaigns – the underlying message remains clear: dissent is dangerous and satire, once a tool for laughing at power, is now treated as an act of rebellion.
