Editorial cartoons do not just mirror politics, but are also
themselves a part of politics. They are more than single-panel graphical
commentaries on daily policies, for they construct their own claims on
truth. The cartoonist can use the polysemic nature of visual signs and
present a distinct framing perspective. Editorial cartoonists with certain
ideological stances can become an actor in “the struggle for
cultural supremacy,” in Tarrow's (1998) term. This struggle refers to efforts by the
state, media, and social movements to influence the interpretative
processes by which individuals negotiate the meaning of events. This paper
analyzes the editorial cartoons in Turkish daily newspapers in terms of
their competing framings of contemporary Turkey's secularist-Islamist
division. Secularism and Islamism refer here to political projects that
seek to transform and reinstitute a sociopolitical order on the basis of
some constitutive norms (Çınar 2005, 8–9).