Cartoon Critiques of Nineteenth-Century Istanbul

Michael Talbot, University of St Andrews

Satire and humour form a huge part of critiques of politics and society in Turkey, and Turkish satirists have excelled in producing cutting and irreverent cartoons, from Gırgır to Penguen. This tradition has its roots in Turkey's Ottoman past, and one notable example, the satirical journal Hayal (Imagination/Fantasy), shines a vivid light onto perceptions of the changes and tensions in Ottoman society in the nineteenth century. Fans of Ottoman history have probably encountered some of Hayal's cartoons already in Nora Şeni's brilliant examination of their portrayals of attitudes towards women, fashion, and gender roles.

Hayal contains satirical and comic dialogues between, and cartoons often featuring Hacivat and Karagöz, the stars of the Turkish shadow plays. The personalities of these two characters provide the main theme of Hayal's satire, the divisions between the new bourgeoise elites (represented by the educated and, in this case, Europeanising Hacivat) and the urban masses (the simple and cheeky Karagöz).  Published in a time of significant cultural and political innovations, Hayal's writers and artists had a lot of material to work with. A significant amount of page space was devoted to ridiculing rival newspapers in the still nascent Ottoman press, and mocking and critiquing the pretensions, habits, and ideologies of the emerging middle class elites in Istanbul.

The following cartoons from 1874 are a small selection of some of my favourites that capture supposed everyday situations. They admittedly are among the tamer examples in the journal's collection (some of which are positively surreal), but still have the power to raise a smile, if not an eyebrow. Some of the most accessible gags are slapstick in nature, and the best of those depict the humiliation of members of the establishment. In the first example, we can see a street porter whacking a uniformed official and a well-to-do gentleman (representing expanding state force and bureaucracy respectively) with the heavy load on his back as he gets on with his business.

Varide.......!!!

Coming through......!!!

Many of Hayal's cartoons examined these tensions between old and new, with the rough-and-ready working masses fighting for street space with promenading peacocks and other new and often intrusive characters and institutions. Part of Hayal's critique involved examining the new technologies and structures being adopted by the state with the intention of pushing forward "progress" in Ottoman public life. The cartoon below picks on one of the perceived faults in the relatively new Ottoman postal service through the depiction of the arrival of a letter at an Istanbul townhouse. The cartoon doesn't attack the postal system itself, but rather highlights the incompetency of the local postman; a fool in a uniform is simply a uniformed fool.

- O nereden geliyor?

- Arnavutköy'ünden.

- Ne vakıt gelmiş?

- Geldiği vaktı bilmem lakin bir aydır yanımda duruyor.

- Where did that come from?

- From Arnavutköy.
- When did it come?
- I don't know when it came, but it's been with me for a month.

Encounters with officialdom and incompetence were evidently part of the Istanbul experience, but the tension created by rapid social change had the potential to manifest itself in confrontation. In this next cartoon, we encounter the end of a presumably heated discussion between a ferryman and the well-heeled passenger on his back, and his comments seem aimed at the two gentlemen waiting on the bank as well.

(Kasımpaşa deresinde)

-İşte öyle çelebi! Buraya kadar yirmi para. O bir başa gideceksen kırk para...yoksa in. Sonra niza istemem...

(At the Kasımpaşa stream)

-That's the way it is, mister! Up to here, it's twenty paras. If you're going to the other side, it's forty paras...otherwise, down you go. Now, I don't want any more arguments...

Anyone who has been taken for a ride by an unscrupulous taxi driver can sympathise with the frustration of being overcharged. However, it is the cheap çelebi who is the villain of this piece. Given that the unfortunate ferryman in the cartoon represented genuine workers who had to carry their passengers for a few measly coins across the fetid, cholera-ridden, sewage-filled Kasımpaşa stream, we can't really blame him for trying to get a fair fare; the money discussed here really was a pittance, a few dollars in modern terms. Therefore, as with the satisfaction in seeing the elites in the first cartoon getting an inadvertent clip around the head with the porter's load, one can't help but wish to see this mean passenger dunked with his spotless white coat into the muck of the stream.

In Hayal's visions of urban life the various forms of idiocy, madness, and danger were often accompanied by filth and dirt. Some of the worst places to find a nauseating mixture of incompetence and uncleanliness were (and are) in a city's eateries. We've all gone out and eaten a meal we've gone on to regret, and in this dig at Istanbul's lokantas, we see Hayal exploring that fear. A cook in European chef's whites carefully tastes his broth without paying attention to the pipe in his mouth, a comment on both the cuisine and levels of pretentiousness to be found in the new alafranga eateries.

Beyoğlu'nun ekser lokantalarında yemeklerin çeşnisine olunan dikkat...!

Beware of the seasoning of the food in most of the Beyoğlu restaurants...!

One aspect of Istanbul life that evidently hasn't changed is the stereotyping of certain districts of the city. In this final image, we encounter some regional stereotyping in a cartoon drawn by the Armenian Nishan Berberyan, one of Hayal's main cartoonists, a pioneer of Ottoman satire, and a publisher and translator in his own right. In this cartoon, entitled İstanbul'un bazı metâ'yı (Some of the wares of Istanbul), each item represents a neighbourhood in and around Istanbul, and in some cases embodies that neighbourhood's supposed characteristics:

1. Kavaklı     2. Eyüplü     3. Bayrampaşalı     4. Darıcalı     5. Beyoğlulu     6. Yedikuleli      

7. Beykozlu     8. Langalı     9. Göksulu     10. Adalı     11. Çamlıcalı    12. Galatalı     13. Selamsızlı

Some of the items are quite straightforward, such as no.3, as there was and is a type of artichoke called Bayrampaşa enginarı. I suspect that no.8 may well be a little Langa hıyarı, a particular kind of cucumber grown in that area (today's Yenikapı). On its deeper symbolism, I wonder if 'hıyar' had the same double meaning in Ottoman Istanbul as it does today, the first being a cucumber, and the second being an insult equating to something like 'blockhead', which might explain the gormless expression on the cucumber's face.

Many of these are rather more obscure. After an appeal for information on the Ottoman History Podcast Facebook page, some interesting suggestions came forward (and thank you to everyone who helped out). Philipp Wirtz identified no.1 as a garlic, but then the question begs what is the association between Kavak and garlic? Is it evidence of a sort of Istanbullu rhyming slang (Kavak/sarımsak - tenuous, I know)? Adam Talib made the intriguing suggestion that no.2 could be a dandelion, which could well be the case. Was Eyüp noted for dandelions, often used in medicinal concoctions?

One of the more interesting items here is no.5, described by Elyse Semerdjian a racialised carrot, and by Kalliopi Amygdalou as a creepy businessman carrot, both of which seem rather good descriptions. Is this an anti-Semitic representation, given Beyoğlu's large Jewish population? Or is it a dig at the Europeans who inhabited that area? And was Beyoğlu noted for its carrots, or is this a redhead joke? Zoe Griffith suggested that no.11 depicts grapes in the shape of a toy poodle, which seems spot on to me, but what is the meaning here? Does it suggest that Çamlıca was a particularly pretentious area? And why is Selamsız depicted as a broom? Was it noted for broom production, or is this somehow a comment on that neighbourhood's large Roma population?

This final cartoon raises more questions than answers, and some of those answers may well be beyond our reach (although hopefully not). Some satire can survive the test of time, and require little in the way of explanation. Other productions based more on intimate local knowledge and in-jokes provide us with more of a challenge. Yet all in all, these wonderful cartoons offer us a valuable and critical perspective on the tensions and foibles of Istanbul's inhabitants in the 1870s.

UPDATE: Since this piece was first published, I have received some wonderful insights from Professor Selçuk Esenbel, who has provided us with clearer information on some of the cartoon's characters.

No. 1 is not a garlic, but the local fig variety known as Kavak, which is grown in Kavak village. It is the dark purple variety with thick skin and comes out in late August as the sad sign of the end of summer and the shape is exactly as it is drawn here-looking like a head of garlic.

The lobster or the Islands is obvious as once there was the Istanbul Marmara Sea type of small lobster. There may not be any left now, but they could be caught in baskets off the Islands or Dragos, and even in Bebek.

Yedikule is a Marul Romaine lettuce. Göksu is mısır, corn on the cob.  Galata is francala ekmek, the European-type bread made with white flour in the Beyoğlu area, as opposed to the round ekmek for commoners made of darker wheat flour. During the 1960 coup, the junta abolished the distinction and all bakeries were ordered to bake francala, which is what is found in the grocers today.

Eyüp is actually a hand made fırıldak - confirming Zoë Griffith's guess of a toy windmill. They still sell them, although the current versions are imported from China. Eyüp was apparently famous for making children’s toys, and such a windmill would be quite a collectors item today. And finally, Selamsız is a çalı süpürge, the kind of broom made of a special natural bush still used by the Belediye even today to sweep the streets. Such sweeping was traditionally done by Kurds, not Roma.

Many thanks for Professor Esenbel, and perhaps in time I can update readers with further solutions to this mystery.

Sources: Hayal, 16 Mart 1290; 19 Mart 1290; 22 Mart 1290; 30 Mart 1290; 26 Haziran 1290.

racialised

carrots