Published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, the newspaper's headquarters in Istanbul were attacked and the cartoonist was arrested

A group of people attacked the offices of the Turkish weekly satirical magazine Leman in Istanbul after the magazine published a cartoon depicting Muhammad. According to local media reports, some Islamists tried to force open the door of the building in the city center, breaking windows with stones and sticks, before being stopped by police. The author of the cartoon was arrested.

Video of the arrest of the author of the cartoon on social media "I once again curse those who try to spread hypocrisy by drawing cartoons of our Prophet," Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X, announcing the arrest of the artist, identified by the initials DP, and publishing a video showing police officers arresting a person, on the steps of a building.

Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunc also spoke out against the cartoon, writing in X: "Disrespecting our beliefs is never acceptable." The Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office has launched a judicial investigation into the crime of "publicly insulting religious values," under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code. In addition to the cartoonist, the prosecutor's office has issued a detention order against three other people, including two editors and the editor-in-chief responsible for the newspaper.

What was in the incriminating cartoon? The offensive cartoon published in the June 26 issue depicts Muhammad and Moses suspended in midair amidst a hail of bullets and bombs, against the backdrop of a burning city. Muhammad greets Moses with a typical Muslim greeting (Selam aleykum) and Moses responds with a typical Jewish greeting (Aleikhem shalom) as the two shake hands.

This is not the first time that satirical magazines have been attacked in Turkey. In 2012, people set fire to the offices of Penguin, which was closed in recent years, while in 2011, Bahadir Baruter, a well-known satirist, was put on trial for a cartoon mocking religion, accused of "insulting religious values". In 2015, two journalists from the daily Cumhuriyet, Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya, were at the center of a legal suit for publishing, along with their names in their editorials, the cover of the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that appeared in France after the attack on the French magazine on January 7 of that year, claimed by Al Qaeda and which claimed the lives of 12 people. (A2 Televizion)