Employees of the satirical magazine detained on the controversy of the prophet’s cartoon in Türkiye

The Turkish police arrested three employees more than one satirical magazine on Tuesday, which increased the number of people detained by a cartoon that allegedly represented the prophet Muhammad to four.

The cartoon, published in the Leman magazine, drew a series of condemnation of government officials who declared that it represented the prophet Muhammad and caused an angry protest outside the Istanbul office of the magazine.

Leman, in a statement on Monday night, denied the accusations and insisted that the raffle intended to portray a Muslim man named Muhammad and was destined to highlight the suffering of Muslims.

The pro -government newspaper Yeni Safak said that the cartoon showed that “two figures that are supposedly the prophet Muhammad and the prophet Moses, with wings and halos, shaking hands in the sky, while a war scene develops underneath with bombs that Lloven.” The Independent Birgun newspaper also said that the winged figures floated in the sky were interpreted by some as Muhammad and Moses prophets.

The authorities initiated an investigation into the weekly magazine on the accusations of “publicly insulting religious values” and arrested the cartoonist, Dogan Pehlevan, from his home.

During the night, the editor in chief of Leman Zafer Aknar, the Gabbil graphic designer OKCU and the manager Ali Yavuz were also arrested, the state agency Anadolu reported. Detention orders were also issued for two editors that are believed to be abroad, according to the report.

On Monday, the protesters, according to the reports, belonging to an Islamic group, threw rocks at the headquarters of Leman in the center of Istanbul and fought with the police.

The publication apologized for any crime caused, but also asked the authorities to act against what he described as a smear campaign and protect freedom of expression.

The separate videos of the arrests, shared by the Interior Minister, Ali Yerlikaya, showed that Pehlevan and Yavuz were taken by the force of their homes, their hands were handcuffed behind them.

“These shameless people will be responsible before the law,” Yerlikaya wrote in X.

“You will not escape our security or justice forces,” Yerlikaya wrote in a separate publication.

“An act of annihilation”

But the editor in chief of the magazine, Tunday Akgun, told News by phone from Paris that the image had been misunderstood and that “it was not a cartoon of the Muhammad’s prophet.”

“In this work, the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombings of Israel is fictional as Muhammad. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are called Muhammad,” he said, saying that “nothing to do with the prophet Mohammed.

“We would never risk,” he said.

Police also took over the offices of the magazine in Istiklal Avenue and arrest orders had been issued for several other executives of the magazine, wrote the presidential press assistant Fahrettin Altin in X.

In a series of publications in X, Leman defended the cartoon and said that he had been deliberately misunderstood to cause a provocation.

“The cartoonist wanted to portray the justice of the oppressed Muslim people representing a Muslim killed by Israel, he never intended to belittle religious values,” he said.

Akgun said that the legal attack against the magazine, a satirical bastion of the opposition that was founded in 1991, was “incredibly shocking but not very surprising.”

“This is an act of annihilation. The ministers are involved throughout the business, a cartoon is distorted,” he said.

“Drawing similarities with Charlie Hebdo is very intentional and very worrying,” he said about the French satirical magazine whose offices were assaulted by armed Islamist men in 2015.

The attack, which killed 12 people, occurred after he published cartoons that ridiculed the prophet Muhammad.

Agance France-Presse contributed to this report.

• Turkey
• Islam