Smuggling Intellectual Freedom under Physical Constraint: The Enemy’s Body in Turkish Prison Cartoons

Through an examination of “prison cartoons,” a trend that flourished as a consequence of the phenomenon of mass imprisonment that characterized Turkish military rule, this article focuses on the multiple redefinitions of the concept of “enemy” that were elaborated in the aftermath of the 1980 coup in Turkey. Professional as well as amateur cartoonists who experienced detention produced political caricatures and comic strips as witnesses of their jail life and sent them to the weekly satirical magazine Gırgır, in which, notwithstanding repression and censorship, they were regularly published. This article investigates the strategies by which the definition of and the fight against the “enemy” were repeatedly negotiated in and through these cartoons.