WATCH: Journalist Can Dündar & Political Cartoonist Anwar on Their Graphic Novel, ERDOĞAN
Turkish journalist and documentary filmmaker Can Dündar and Egyptian Sudanese political cartoonist Anwar reflect on their collaborative graphic novel on the origins of Turkey's most powerful man: Erdoğan: A Graphic Biography—The Rise of Turkey’s Modern Autocrat.
One of the world's most divisive and controversial leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled over Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003. Situated at the crossroads between Europe and Asia with a population of eighty-four million, Turkey is a growing economic powerhouse with a geopolitically strategic location. As its leader, the Islamic, conservative Erdoğan has had a polarizing effect on the country's populace; some applaud his economic and political reforms, while others decry his autocratic, iron-fisted rule, which has included the jailing of opponents, the crushing of free speech and the rights of LGBTQ+ people and others, and an ongoing war waged against the country's Kurdish minority.
Now available in English (translated by L.L. Kreider), this graphic biography features compelling illustrations and provides a critical and dramatic context for understanding the authoritarian Erdoğan's convictions and contradictions as a demagogue for whom democracy has been merely a means to power.
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Erdoğan: A Graphic Biography is available in North America on October 3, 2023, and in the UK, Europe, and Australia in November. Order from your local bookstore or direct from Arsenal Pulp Press:
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CAN DÜNDAR is a Turkish journalist and documentary filmmaker and the former editor-in-chief of the Istanbul newspaper Cumhuriyet. One of the most prominent figures in Turkish media, Dündar is the 2016 recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists' International Press Freedom Award in the US. He has been living in exile in Berlin since June 2016.
ANWAR is an Egyptian Sudanese comic artist and political cartoonist. He was among the new wave of young political cartoonists who emerged in Egypt in the final years of former dictator Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian revolution that broke out in 2011 was central to Anwar's development as an artist. After the retraction of political reforms in Egypt in 2011, Anwar was arrested in 2019 and deported. He now lives in Berlin.
L.L. KREIDER hails from a village in the US but has lived in other parts of the globe for over two decades. She continues to hone her translation skills, wherever in the world she may be.
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