65. Today in 1920s Turkey: 25 February 1920 (Censorship: You Win Some You Lose Some, Part 3 of 3)

Content NA, Karagöz, 25 February 1920, no. 1249, page 3.

Türkçe:
Çiçek Falı: Bu haftanın falı sansür tarafından çıkarılmıştır.

English:
Flower Horoscope: This week’s prediction was removed by the office of censorship.

Comments:
The same issue of Karagöz as the one considered in the previous post (#64. Censorship: Better Late Than Never, Part 2 of 3) is the subject of this last post in the three part series on recent censorship encounters in post-WWI Ottoman Istanbul.

While the previous week’s cartoon arrived onto the pages of the 25 February 1920 issue of Karagöz late and incomplete, when flipping through the rest of the publication it becomes apparent that other content had not been so lucky. The first example is the above horoscope from page 3, which has been removed, begging the question: what fictitious prediction could have possibly triggered censorship?

Entire page, Karagöz, 25 February 1920, no. 1249, page 3. Hakkı Tarık Us Collection, Beyazıt Library, Istanbul.

As something that “reports” on future events that have clearly not happened (and probably won’t happen) it is surprising that such a blurb would be considered threatening enough to be removed. This suggests that while constituting a genre of completely invented narrative, today’s edition of Flower Horoscope was nevertheless a threat to the interests of the Istanbul governments (either sultanate or Allied) in some way that we will never know.

And indeed, as we continue to peruse the same issue of Karagöz we can see that once again, a back-cover (fourth page) cartoon has also been censored. Below is the not-so-exciting image of the blank space with the announcement running across it.

Cartoon NA, Karagöz, 25 February 1920, no. 1249, page 4.

English:
The picture has been removed by the office of censorship.

Türkçe:
Resim, sansür tarafından tay edilmiştir.

Unlike the previously discussed cartoon, a survey of subsequent issues of Karagöz does not belatedly reveal the content of today’s missing cartoon, or if it does, the editor failed to label it as “the cartoon from last week.”

So many words for so much missing content!

Entire page, Karagöz, 25 February 1920, no. 1249, page 4. Hakkı Tarık Us Collection, Beyazıt Library, Istanbul.

Originally published at https://steemit.com on February 26, 2017.