İbrahim Özdabak is a Turkish cartoonist whose personal website includes cartoons dating back to 2005 covering many subjects relevant to Turkish society and politics.[1] Many of his cartoons have antisemitic themes, depicting Jews as blood-soaked butchers, vultures circling over Palestinian land, and vampires drinking Palestinian blood. These cartoons present the same images of Jews as those circulated in the antisemitic tabloid Der Stürmer and other Nazi-era publications. His cartoons are printed in the Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Asya ("New Asia"), which sold 11,245 copies during the week of April 9, 2018, making it the 29th most popular print newspaper in Turkey.[2] The Yeni Asya newspaper is connected to a subsect of the Nurcu movement by the same name. The Nurcu movement comprises the followers of the Kurdish Sunni Muslim theologian Said Nursi, whose writings many of Özdabak's comics praise.
İbrahim Özdabak
This report presents some of Özdabak's antisemitic cartoons on Jews and Israel published over the last two years.
The cartoon below was a response to an open letter published April 22, 2018 in the French-language Le Parisien newspaper proposing that "the verses of the Quran calling for murder and punishment of Jews, Christians, and nonbelievers be struck to obsolescence by religious authorities," so that "no believer can refer to a sacred text to commit a crime."[3] The letter drew harsh criticism from French Muslims, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded harshly to it in a speech on May 8, [4] saying: "In France, some group came out and published a communique calling for the removal of certain verses from the Quran. Even though it is very clear that the people who said this do not know anything about the Quran, I wonder, in their lives, have they ever read their own books, [such as] the Bible? Or have they ever read the Torah? Or have they ever read the Book of Psalms? If they had read it, they would probably also want the Bible to be banned... When we warn the Western countries about anti-Muslim sentiment, anti-Turkish sentiment, xenophobia, and racism, we get a bad reputation. Oh West, know that while you attack our holy book, we are not going to attack your sanctities, but we are going to take you down."[5]
"Remove the verses about us from the Quran." (Yeniasya.com.tr, May 8, 2018.)
The Jew plotting to take over the entire region "east of the Nile" and "west of the Euphrates" (Yeniasya.com.tr, June 26, 2016.)
(Yeniasya.com.tr, April 28, 2018.)
A Jewish Nero plays the harp while the "Islamic world" burns. (Yeniasya.com.tr, August 1, 2016.)
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"Gaza Chambers." This cartoon plays on the similarity in Turkish between the words "gas" and "Gaza." (Ibrahimozdabak.com, date unknown.)
Solving the puzzle of the Büyük Ortadoğu Projesi ("Greater Middle East Project") reveals the Star of David. (Yeniasya.com.tr, July 20, 2017.)
Jews raise the Nazi symbol over "Jerusalem." (Yeniasya.com.tr, July 21, 2017.)
A Jewish man praying at the Western Wall laughs at the message on his phone, which reads: "Turkey and Israel have come to an agreement." (Yeniasya.com.tr, June 28, 2016.)
The cartoon below refers to a hadith that reads: "Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews." In the cartoon, the Gharqad tree says: "Run, Israel, run!"
(Ibrahimozdabak.com, July 2014.)
In the following cartoon U.S. President Donald Trump is depicted as the Gharqad tree.
(Yeniasya.com.tr, December 14, 2016.)
"Here there is a bit of Palestinian land left!" (Yeniasya.com.tr, November 18, 2016.)
The Jewish vulture identifies "Jerusalem" as "our new capital" (Yeniasya.com.tr, July 30, 2017.)
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says: "Our supply of blood has gotten low again, we are obtaining some from Gaza." (Yeniasya.com.tr, August 24, 2016.)
"Israel is run by the most fascist government in history." (Yeniasya.com.tr, May 24, 2016.)
