Turkey barks over German textbook showing Erdogan in doghouse (cartoons)

Turkey is very angry that a cartoon slurring Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by portraying him as a dog, has made its way into a German high school textbook

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the German ambassador Eberhard Pohl to protest over the appearance of a caricature of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dog in a German high school textbook for social studies.

The textbook in question was used by students at the southern state of Baden Wuerttemberg. The image that offended Turkey was taken from a 2011 article from Frandfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper where Erdogan was featured as a guard dog showing his growling teeth while coming out of a kennel marked with his name. The cartoon was used in is titled “Turks in Germany – a success story”. The cartoon suggested that there were integration problems concerning Turks living in Germany.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry believes that such cartoons create a feeling of isolation among Turks and Muslims in Germany. “We strongly condemn the appearance in a school textbook of a cartoon insulting our respected president and all Turks living in Germany,” said a statement by the Turkish Foreign Ministry. “There is no place in democracies for attempts to incite hatred in society, xenophobia and Islamophobia.”

This is not the first time that President Erdogan has been the butt of cartoonists and the president is known for showing intolerance to this type of satire. Musa Kart, a cartoonist for Cumhurriyet daily newspaper was last month acquitted from charges of insulting the president. In 2005, Mr. Erdogan had sued Penguin magazine for caricaturing him as different animals under the title “The World of Tayyips.” The case was thrown out of court in 2006.

As a result of Mr. Erdogan’s stand, several cartoonists outside Turkey have published caricatures mocking Mr. Erdogan under a Twitter hashtag campaign #Erdogancaricature.

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