Erdogan

Winner, 2022 Atomium Comic Strip Prize

A comprehensive graphic biography of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the authoritarian president of Turkey.

One of the world's most divisive and controversial leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled over Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003. This graphic biography sheds light on the origins of Turkey's most powerful man, from his youth as a budding soccer player to his years spent navigating Turkey's political landscape, including the founding of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. Author Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist and contributor to the Washington Post now living in exile in Berlin, spent several years researching this book. In 2015, he was arrested when his newspaper published photos of Turkey's state intelligence sending weapons to ISIS in Syria; in 2020, he was sentenced in absentia by Turkish courts to 27 years in prison for espionage and aiding an armed terrorist organisation.

Situated at the crossroads between Europe and Asia with a population of 84 million, Turkey is a growing economic powerhouse with a geopolitically strategic location. As its leader, the Islamic, conservative Erdoğan has had a polarising effect on the country's populace; some applaud his economic and political reforms, while others decry his autocratic, iron-fisted rule which has included the jailing of opponents, the crushing of free speech and the rights of LGBTQ+ people and others, and an ongoing war waged against the country's Kurdish minority.

Featuring compelling illustrations by Egyptian-Sudanese comic artist Anwar, this book provides a critical and dramatic context for understanding Erdoğan's convictions and contradictions as a demagogue for whom democracy has been merely a means to power.

'Can Dündar is a very courageous journalist.' - Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

'Can Dündar belongs to that elite of extraordinarily brave journalists who risk everything so the world can know the truth. His voice honours a great country in peril.' - Jennifer Clement, former president of PEN International