Caricaturing the enemy
VIEW FULL TEXT

Keywords

humour
caricatures
war
superiority-denigration theory
rivalry

How to Cite

Travlos, K., Akyüz, D., & Mert Travlos , C. (2023). Caricaturing the enemy: caricatures and the Greek-Turkish War 1919-1922. The European Journal of Humour Research, 10(4), 57–81. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2022.10.4.707

Abstract

 A century ago, the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 (Turkish War of Liberation/Asia Minor Campaign) was reaching its culmination point. The war was also fought in the pages of the Press. In this study, we look at the characteristics of the caricatures marshalled in the war effort by three publications. The Greek newspaper Skrip, and the Turkish satirical magazines Karagöz and Güleryüz. We find that most expectations based on semiotics and the concept of interstate rivalry are borne out. Depictions of the ‘Other’ are generally negative. That said we also find that Skrip dedicated the majority of its caricatures to targeting the internal ‘Other’, the Venizelist faction during the National Schism, in contrast to the more focused targeting of the Greek ‘Other’ by the Turkish publications. This finding indicates the dominance of domestic conflicts over the external conflict even during the inflation point of the Greek-Turkish Interstate Rivalry of 1866-1925.

https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2022.10.4.707
VIEW FULL TEXT

References

Ang, I. (2006). Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. Abingdon: Routledge.

Antonopoulos, Y. (2016). O Ψυχρός Πόλεμος Στις Ελληνικές Γελοιογραφίες 1950-1967 [The Cold War through Greek Caricatures 1950-1967]. Athens: Panteion University, Department of Political Science and History, MA Thesis.

Aviv, E. E. (2013). Cartoons in Turkey – From Abdülhamid to Erdoğan. Middle Eastern Studies 49 (2), pp. 221-236.

Barthes, R. (1964). ‘The structuralist activity’. From Essais Critiques (trans. R. Howard), Partisan Review 34, pp. 82-88.

Colaresi, M., Rasler, K. & Thompson, W. (2009). Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space and Conflict Escalation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cottle, S. (2000). ‘Media research and ethnic minorities: mapping the field’, in Cottle, S. (ed.), Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries, Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp. 1-30.

Çeviker, T. (1991). Gelişim Sürecinde Türk Karikatürü – III, Kurtuluş Savaşı Dönemi (1918-1923) [Turkish Caricature in the Development Process – III, War of Liberation Period (1918-1923)]. Istanbul: Adam Yayınları.

Çoruk, A. Ş. (2008). Mizah Penceresinden Milli Mücadele [The National Struggle through the Humor]. Istanbul: Kitabevi Yayinlari.

De Saussure, F. (1916 [1960]). Course in General Linguistics. London: Peter Owen.

Fluri, J. L. (2019). ‘What's so funny in Afghanistan?: Jocular geopolitics and the everyday use of humor in spaces of protracted precarity’. Political Geography 68, pp.125-130.

Goertz, G., Diehl, P. F. & Balas, A. (2016). The Puzzle of Peace: The Evolution of Peace in the International System. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hall S. (2003). ‘The work of representation’, in Hall, S. (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, pp. 13-74.

Hamilakis, Y. (2000). ‘No laughing matter: antiquity in Greek political cartoons’. Public Archaeology 1 (1), pp. 57-72.

İnce, G. B. (2015). ‘The free republican party in the political cartoons of the 1930s’. New Perspectives on Turkey 53, pp. 93-136.

İnce, G. B. (2014). ‘The depiction of women’s suffrage in Turkey in the editorial cartoons of the era’. Journal of Yaşar University 10 (37), pp. 6413-6431.

Kılıç, S. (2011). ‘Contribution of Karagöz Humour Maganize (1908-1955) to socio-cultural transformations of the Turkish society which derives its sources from the Karagöz Humour practices and its importance through the perspective of the Turkish cultural history’. Journal of International Social Research 4 (16), pp. 238-247.

Klein, J. P., Goertz, G. & Diehl, P. F. (2006). ‘The New Rivalry Dataset: procedures and patterns’. Journal of Peace Research 43 (3), pp. 331-348.

Kuipers, G. (2012). ‘Ethnic humour and ethnic politics in the Netherlands: the rules and attraction of clandestine humour’, in Kessel, M. & Merziger, P. (eds.), The Politics of Humour, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 175-201.

Lotman, Y. (2000). Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lund, A. & Lundström, L. (2021). ‘You were imported with Kebaps: “Pisstaking” as culture in interaction’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 24 (1), pp. 275-294.

Mannarini, T., Salvatore, S. & Veltri G. A. (2020). ‘Identity, otherness, and psycho-cultural dynamics’, in Mannarini, T., Salvatore, S. & Veltri, G. A. (eds.), Media and Social Representations of Otherness: Psycho-Social-Cultural Implications, Springer, pp. 1-16.

Mavrogordatos, G. Th. (2015). 1915: Ο Εθνικός Διχασμός [1915: The National Schism]. Athens: Patakis, 2015.

Noderer, S. (2020). ‘No laughing matter? The potential of political humor as a means of nonviolent resistance’. Zeitschrift für Friedens-und Konfliktforschung 9 (2), pp. 255-277.

Okyar, I. B. (2020). ‘Ethnic stereotyping and the significant Other: reimagining the Kurd in early Turkish political cartoons’. Middle Eastern Studies 56 (4), pp, 607-625.

Papa, E. (2019). Αναπαραστάσεις εμφύλιας σύγκρουσης και ιδεολογημάτων στις πολιτικές γελοιογραφίες του Αρχέλαου (1945-1947): Σημειωτικές αναγνώσεις και διδακτικές προσεγγίσεις [Representations of Intercine Conflict and Ideologies in the Political Caricatures of Archelaos (1945-1947): A Reading of Notes, and Educational Approaches]. Kozani: University of Western Macedonia, Faculty of Education, Department of Kindergarten Education. MA Thesis.

Parusheva, D. (2013). ‘Bulgarians gazing at the Balkans: neighboring people in Bulgarian political caricature at the beginning of the twentieth century’, in Demski, D, Ildikó, Sz. K. & Baraniecka-Olszewska, K. (eds.), Competing Eyes: Visual Encounters with Alterity in Central and Eastern Europe, Budapest: L'Harmattan, pp. 418-437.

Parusheva, D. (2008).’They are all rotters! Political culture and political caricature in South-Eastern Europe, late 19th and early 20th century’. Etudes Balkaniques 4, pp. 37-63.

Pater, A. (2012). ‘Producing a cheerful public: light radio entertainment during national socialism’, in Kessel, M. & Merziger, P. (eds.), The Politics of Humour, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 108-130.

Purcell, D., Heitmeier, B. &Van Wyhe, C. (2017). ‘Critical geopolitics and the framing of the Arab spring through late‐night humor. Social Science Quarterly 98 (2), pp. 513-531.

Remm, T. (2011). ‘Understanding the city through its semiotic spatialities’. Sign Systems Studies 39 (2/4), pp. 124-144.

Rigatos, T. S. (2020). Η χιουμοριστική κατασκευή του «Αλλού» στον Ελληνικό και Τουρκικό Τύπο: Οι Γελοιογραφίες του 1955, 1974, 1999 [Humoristic Construction of the “Other” in the Greek and Turkish Press: The Caricatures of 1955, 1974, 1999]. Rhodes: University of the Aegean, Faculty of Humanistic Sciences, Department Mediterranean Studies, MA Thesis.

Rudkevich, G., Travlos, K. & Diehl, P. F. (2013). ‘Terminated or just interrupted? How the end of a rivalry plants the seeds for future conflict’. Social Science Quarterly 94 (1), pp. 158-174.

Senese, P. D. & Vasquez, J. A. (2008). The Steps to War. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sert, D. Ş. & Travlos, K. (2018). ‘Making a case over Greco-Turkish rivalry: major power linkages and rivalry strength’. Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi-Journal of International Relations 15 (59), pp. 105-127.

Tsirigotis, D. (2020) ‘The Asia minor debacle: the causes of Greece’s defeat’, in Travlos, K. (ed.), Salvation and Catastrophe: The Greek-Turkish War, 1919–1922, London: Lexington Books, pp. 111-142.

Welch, M. (2020). ‘Signs of trouble: semiotics, streetscapes, and the republican struggle in the North of Ireland’. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 16 (1), pp. 7-32.

Zolota, A. D. (2009). Δημοσιογραφία και Ελληνική Εξωτερική Πολιτική (Τέλη 19ου αρχές 20ου Αιώνα). Η Τεχνική και ο Λόγος των Συνεντεύξεων [Journalism and Greek Foreign Policy (Late 19th and Early 20th Century). Technique and Wording of Interviews]. MA Thesis, Thessaloniki: Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki, Department of History and Archeology.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2022 The European Journal of Humour Research

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.