Review: Drawing from the Edge: Chronicles From Istanbul, Ersin Karabulut 

by Luke Frostick

Drawing from the Edge: Chronicles From Istanbul is the first part of Ersin Karabulut’s memoir off his life living in Istanbul and working at one of the top satirical cartoon magazines in the country. The first volume follows his childhood in a poorer secular family in the suburbs of Istanbul, beginning to work in the comics industry and his career working for Penguin up until Erdoğan’s failed law suit against the company. 

Karabulut tells the story of modern Turkish history well, giving the perspective of his family as the major political events of the time, most notably the rise of Erdoğan, play out. A particularly powerful segment of the book concerns his father trying to navigate the politically violent and chaotic era of warring political gangs. Despite its short length, I would say that the focus on Karabulut’s father more powerfully evokes what it was like to live through that period and how it influenced peoples thinking for the rest of their lives than the more dry Turkish Kaleidoscope. In addition to these rather excellent pages, the book really clearly articulates the cultural anxiety that the rise of political islam in turkey during the 1990s that secular Turks felt. 

One of the downside of the book is that it clearly is written with a foreign audience in mind. It feels the need to explain details that would have been unnecessary for readers more familiar with turkey; for instance, explaining what Beyoğulu is. In addition, some issues have been simplified. For example, the sivas massacre is implied to be a massacre of secularist intellectuals and doesn’t go into the important Alevi context. Unfortunate, some bits are simply mangled, the book calls simit doughnuts… unacceptable. 

The book, in addition to rushing through a potted political history of the county, is also the story of a young artist. It charts the relatable problems of being a creative youth, surviving the sausage factor of the Turkish education system and the well-meaning attempts of his parents to direct him into a sensible career path. The book will resonate with anybody who has taken the ill advised steps towards becoming a professional artist. 

This book is a love letter to comics’s history, the art of it and the power that they can have. Turkey has a long history of using comics to satirise and criticise the powerful and the magazines that Karabulut worked in fit into that tradition. The crisis point of the book’s second half concerns the law suit against Musa Kart for drawing Erdoğan as a cat. In solidarity with Kart Penguen drew Erdoğan as… well all the animals and was promptly sued as well. The point Karabulut is extremely keen to point out is that, although now it is common place, that kind of legal retaliation against artist was shocking at the time. It flew in the face of the extremely long tradition of political humour in Turkish comics. 

That suit was ultimately won by Penguen, but  As he grimly says,

Although the books narrative makes a bit point off the case agains Penguen, it is not the central conflict that Karabulut wants to highlight. His key point is that autoritatrain systems chill artistic dissent. A lot of the censorship that Karabulut talks about was self censorship. He mentions events such as islamists turning up at his family home to, “have coffee with him,” and the concerns his family had that getting mixed up in politics would bring him to ruin and how they stopped him from creating certain pieces of art that he otherwise would have.

The art in the book is really good. Karabulut draws in the style of the Turkish humour magazine such as Le Man, Girgir, Lombak or its spin off Penguin. However, Karabulut’s real skill is controlling the tone of his book using the art. Panels will seamlessly blend the goofy, humour cartoonist’s style with more realistic art as the tone of the comic requires it. The juxtaposition between the two creates some powerful moments. 

It is also a really dense art style, with extremely filled out panels full of references, detail and jokes. Reading the book I found a lot of satisfaction in the little things hidden in the panels but not comments upon. For example, Karabulut having his first sip of beer out of çay glass made me smile when I spotted it. 

I feel I’ve got quite a long way into this review without making an important point. The book is funny, very funny. Both the witty writing and the panels made me laugh out load at various points. While Karabulut takes aim at all sort of subjects for his humour, he is certainly not above taking some savage shots at himself through the book. 

This book is great, it is a touching personal story, a good overall view of the politics of modern turkey all tied together with some great art and a great sense of humour. Check this one out