The municipality of Yenişehir district in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, run by the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), drew public ire over cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad it hung on billboards.
The cartoons were part of a campaign against child brides, girls forced by their families to marry at a very young age. Accompanied by a caption reading "There are no child brides, only rapist men," the posters show a cartoon, allegedly drawn by a Danish cartoonist, showing a bearded man dragging a naked girl. The original caption with the bearded man saying "I love you Aysha" was one of the cartoons depicting Muhammad that had raised outrage in the Islamic world for insulting the prophet. The posters hung by the Yenişehir municipality were missing the caption.
The incident sparked outrage on social media, with people accusing the municipality of provocation. A Twitter user said the cartoons served the same purpose as terrorism while another user said even the worst offenders of Islamophobia did not commit such an act. The posters, which were hung last week, were removed soon after their photos made rounds online. The municipality released an apology and claimed they simply picked a random photo they found via Google for the campaign. "We never had the intent [of offending people] as some media reports claimed," the statement on the municipality's website said.
The HDP, which is known for its links to the terrorist organization PKK, claims to embrace all faiths and ethnicities in Turkey in its political manifesto, though it pursues a mainly pro-Kurdish policy. In the past, the HDP has sparked outrage among the Muslim community in Turkey for its leaders pledging to shut down the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DİB), the country's top Islamic authority.
Diyarbakır is known as a stronghold of the HDP. It was also the scene of a huge rally by a nongovernmental organization in April to mark the birthday of the prophet. Tens of thousands of people had converged in Diyarbakır for Sacred Birth Week in a series of events with Quranic recitations and religious hymns.
