Cartoonists arrested in Turkey over Mohammed cartoon

Turkish authorities arrested three cartoonists on Monday over a drawing published by the satirical weekly LeMan that appeared to depict the prophets Moses and Mohammed shaking hands over a bombed city.

Yilmaz Tunc, the Minister of Justice, said that an investigation had been launched for “publicly insulting religious values.” In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is the most important messenger of God. “No freedom gives the right to make the sacred values ​​of a faith the subject of ugly humor. The caricature or any form of visual representation of our prophet not only harms our religious values, but also harms social peace,” the minister said. Ali Yerlikaya, the Turkish Minister of the Interior, also spoke on X of a “disgusting drawing” that “undermines religious values.”

LeMan editor-in-chief Tuncay Akgun told AFP that the drawing "is in no way a caricature of the prophet Mohammed." According to him, "the name of a Muslim who died in an Israeli bombardment is fictionalized as Mohammed. The weekly also emphasized on X that the drawing had been (deliberately) misinterpreted. "More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are called Mohammed. The work does not mention the prophet Mohammed," LeMan said .

The arrests sparked protests Monday night in Istanbul, where the weekly is based. Turkish police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd. According to AFP reporters, some 250 to 300 people were quickly involved in the fighting. Turkey consistently scores low on press freedom indexes. Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 159th out of 180 in its 2025 press freedom index.