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Comics and comic strips have been published
in Turkey for the last one hundred odd years with some interruptions,
and for eighty years on a continuous basis. There have been some remarkable
local productions published during this period. Yet, when comics are brought up
in Turkey, the first creations that come to mind are those of foreign origin.
The foremost reason for this is that comics production in Turkey has
never developed into a full-fledged industry branch. Local comics that were
financed and supported by newspaper publishers could not rival foreign
publications, neither on a quantitative nor on a qualitative basis. Therefore
it is of no surprise that even during the years 1955-1975, generally known as
the golden age of comics in Turkey, no locally produced children’s comics
attained widespread popularity.
Still, the country saw the creation of many significant
comics, such as Karaoğlan by Suat Yalaz, Abdülcanbaz by Turhan Selçuk, and Sezgin Burak‘s Tarkan. In this period, comics were
published daily in the form of comic strips in newspapers, which would mostly
be compiled in full-length comic books after their daily publication. At a time
when magazines for children could survive even on small sales figures,
cartoonists turned first and foremost to periodicals, thus reinforcing the
presence of comics across their pages. With growing income and influence, the
artists were then able to develop their work more deeply, allowing their
creations from then on to incorporate narrative forms according to the needs of
the publication and readers’ profiles.
Turkish authors’ focus on historical themes, extravagant
prose about heroic figures, and eroticism seem to have met readers’
expectations as well as publishers’, as these elements have firmly established
themselves over the years. Traditionally, almost every newspaper (Hürriyet, Milliyet, Akşam, etc.) has reserved a space
for comic strips, especially historical ones. The benefits to newspapers have
not come solely from the growing interest in this genre—comic strips have
contributed to newspaper design on the visual level, too. Due to insufficient
printing technology before the 1970s, photographs were only scarcely used.
Thus, artists who worked both with the newspapers and in the comic strip genre
were able to shape the visual aspect of the Turkish press. Caricatures,
vignettes, portraits, illustrations and various decorations were all used in
place of photographs. Comics artists (such as Suat Yalaz, Bedri Koraman, and
Turhan Selçuk) generally received good salaries and the comic strips they
produced returned high royalties.
With the introduction of modern printers to Turkey,
however, photographs soon took over on the visual level. This transformation
would reduce both the standing of comic strips within the newspaper industry as
well as the royalties paid for their creation. Due to subsiding royalties,
newspaper illustrators and graphic artists gradually turned their attention
away from the production of comic strips, and despite the continued importance
of comic strips since then, they would never again match the high level of
popularity they enjoyed leading up to the 1970s.
The evolution of comics in the highly popular
magazine Gırgır is once again due to
favorable economic conditions and the financial support from newspaper owners.
It all began with the development of offset
web printing facilities by famous media owner Haldun Simavi,
which represented a great step forward in the evolution of print media. Up
until then, it had been virtually impossible to produce hundreds of thousands
of newspapers and distribute them across the entire country in a single day.
But with his new, fast-printing facilities, Simavi revolutionized the press and
printing industry by producing massive amounts of newspapers and magazines rich
in photographs and illustrations. At the onset of the 1970s he also
experimented with an erotic, comical, and to some extent political humour
magazine—Gırgır. Along with its strong
cultural and political identity, Gırgır’s commercial
success cannot be disregarded. The emergence of many comics creators on the national
level and their existence up until today is directly attributable to Gırgır’s strong sales and
economic success. The magazine opened up a new path for artists who
had previously been working mainly for newspapers. Many young people were able
to make a good living in this way through their art, and under such favorable
conditions, other magazines with the same format as Gırgır, sporting caricatures
and humorous comic strips, have also become popular.
Nearly all the comics from the last forty years that have
secured a place in the hearts and minds of the Turkish belong to the humor
genre. The vast majority (Oğuz Aral‘s Utanmaz Adam, or “Shameless Man,” Küçük
Adam by İlban Ertem, En Kahraman Rıdvan by Bülent Arabacioglu, Gaddar Davut by Nuri Kurtcebe, etc.) are based on irony,
drawing heavily on exaggeratedly heroic characters and adventure-filled
episodes by utilizing satirical language. Gırgır and
other humour magazines (Çarşaf, Limon, Fırt) that emerged at the same time
reached total sales figures of one million copies. Such a windfall of sales, as
well as the magazines’ variety, had a great impact on comics, such that the
richness of visual styles and narrative forms rose to an unforeseen
level. Galip Tekin, Suat Gönülay, Kemal
Aratan and Ergün Gündüz were
among the most productive comics artists of those years and the ones that most
strongly influenced the following generations of artists.
However, such burgeoning quality and quantity was
abruptly reversed by the heavy erosion of sales caused by the negative impact
of television, so that by the first half of the 1990s, sales of print media had
fallen by 80 percent compared with figures from just a decade before.
Confronted with the growth of commercial TV channels, many magazines (Leman, Deli, etc.) turned against
mainstream taste and put a new emphasis on stories that could not be aired on
TV. This evolution not only marginalized magazines in general but also affected
comics, investing them with a rather grotesque touch.
The most important magazine of that period was L-Manyak. The main aim of the
magazine is humor and all that relates to buffoonery. Openly obscene and
scatological in character, it scorns the “sensitivities” of urban society.
Typical targets of the magazine are predators, braggarts, the rich, gluttons,
ambitious businessmen, and those who use their sexual attraction to climb up
the social ladder. As opposed to its predecessors, however, one topic is not
touched upon: politics. The cover focuses on grotesque characters and comical
representations of violence and various sexual practices. Decidely vulgar in
nature, the magazine’s humor does however serve as constructive criticism.
Mainstays of the stories in L-Manyak include
the use of violence against oppression and the oppressors, the wish to escape
the masses, mistrust towards certain political agendas, strong and insatiable
sexual desire, hedonism, general mistrust towards others, and indifference to
money.
Nowadays comics in Turkey are styled on the
narrative model of L-Manyak. It is
thus important to understand the common aesthetic preferences at the base of
the L-Manyak trend: as opposed to
the very minimalistic approach cultivated by legendary editor Oğuz Aral, most
editors now prefer drawings against a detail-loaded, photorealistic background
and tiled page designs. Kötü Kedi Şerafettin (Şerafettin the Bad Cat) by Bülent Üstün showcases the punky past of
the author and his aesthetic rebellion. In the L-Manyak “Martyrs”
series by Mrmo Termbelçizer, the author recounts stories about his artist
friends who find death in many different ways. Another subcultural story by
influential artist Oky (Oktay Gençer), Cihangir’de Bi Ev (“A House in
Cihangir”), revolves around a quarter of Istanbul, where Cihangir is shown
as a bohemian space of the city, with a focus on adolescents’ sexual and
emotional relations. Other typical examples of this period are Cengiz Üstün’s grotesque works that invert the
logic of horror movies, like Kunteper Canavarı (The Kunteper Monster), and Gürcan Yurt’s Turkish take on Robinson Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe ve Cuma, or Robinson Crusoe and Friday). Other
comics artists whose various works have recently made a splash are Bahadır Baruter, Kenan Yarar and Ersin Karabulut.
Finally it is of interest to expand on a few artists who
have become prominent in the course of eighty years of local comics production.
Suat Yalaz’s swashbuckling serial Karaoğlan (1962)
and Turhan Selçuk’s formidable Turk in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, Abdülcanbaz (1957), were able
to establish themselves on various platforms and keep up with the times, thus
becoming classics in the Turkish comics scene. Sezgin Burak’s Tarkan is interesting because
of its masterful originality and creative settings. Although Ratip Tahir Burak
is considered by many to be a great painter who stands out for his artful
drawing rather than his stories, he has become a model for the entire Gırgır generation. Oğuz
Aral’s Utanmaz Adam has become a
model as well for its successful scripts and well-conceived storylines. Engin Ergönültaş, born in 1951, deeply
influenced the generations to come by creatively employing the original
character of hınzır (originally
meaning “swine,” “pork”; here in the sense of a boorish and unfeeling
person) and through his literary visuality. Much of the production of today’s
Turkish comics artists is deeply rooted in Ergönültaş’s influential artwork.
With perhaps much more still to come.
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