Dear Friends,
Tan Oral, world wide known as one of the masters of the Turkish cartoon, an excellent person and a good friend of cartoonists, has recently been fired from “Cumhuriyet”, the most serious and prestigious left wing newspaper of Turkey where he used to work since 1976.
The reason of this act was due to a plot organized by another Turkish newspaper, “Yeni Safak”, quite conservative and close to the AKP government.
Last week a young reporter from the “Yeni Safak” newspaper, interviewed Tan, on the occasion of his 50’s year anniversary of cartooning in Turkey. And after been interviewee of more than two hours, becoming more familiar with the artist, she asked to see the drawing to be published next morning in “Cumhuriyet”. Tan, naively signed it and gave it to her as a souvenir with the condition to not published it…
Next day, this cartoon appeared on the first page of “Yeni Safak” with an underline mentioning that this cartoon was exclusively made for “Yeni Safak”. Of course the same cartoon took place the same day on Cumhuriyet’s Tan’s corner. Tan protested hardly “Yeni Safak” which published the day after a short note of apologies. But this was a very good pretext and opportunity for the editor in chief of “Cumhuriyet” to fire Tan Oral who was drawing from time to time cartoons against the official policy of his newspaper.
Tan is now unemployed (!). He didn’t jump on any proposal coming from many other newspapers. He participated with high moral to his 50’s year anniversary exhibition in Eskisehir last Thursday the 12th. But disregarding his up hopes, he hardly needs some support and encouragement from his friends, because he’s still disappointed of the unexpected attitude of his newspaper for which he did during his last 32 years…
Tan is preparing now a manuscript about this recent event, including several articles published in the Turkish local press, all the public reactions, comments and messages sent by his friend and supporters etc…
For your supports and encouraging messages, you can use his e-mail address:
For your comments and reactions to the Cumhuriyet newspaper:
Best personal regards,
Izel Rozental
FECO Vice-President General