Youssouf Franko’s People: Caricatures of an Ottoman Bureaucrat
The year was 1956 when an antique rug dealer in Istanbul sold an art album to a diplomat; thus, the journey began. It passed through the Nile River, and traveled to Afghanistan, Nepal, Vietnam, Japan, and Canada. After traveling almost all continents, it finally came back to its original mainland, Beyoglu, Istanbul.
The 19th-century life of Beyoglu and its population appears inside the album that was drawn by the fabulous drawing-skilled Ottoman bureaucrat and cartoonist Youssouf Franko. A unique 86-page album of 124 unpublished caricatures depicts Istanbul's high society from 1884 to 1896.
Youssouf Franko is a caricaturist who lived in Beyoglu, Istanbul. Because of his duties in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, spending most of his life in Istanbul, he was a member as well as an observer of high-society social circles in Pera Beyoglu. Although drawing caricatures was forbidden during the Ottoman Rule, the pieces of Youssouf survive until today
From Lebanon to Pera
The story begins where his Melkite Catholic father emigrated from. His father, Nasri Franko, first worked as a businessman in Istanbul. After becoming a popular figure in Catholic society, he started working as an officer for Foreign Affairs during the Tanzimat Reform Era. His sons followed him, and they also worked as officers.
One of his sons, Youssouf, was 17 when he started working for Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II. He was successful and got promoted by the Sultan, serving until the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Besides this career, he was good at drawing. As an Ottoman bureaucrat, he had the opportunity to portray different characters from his social life.
Vice, Virtue, Beyoglu
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the development of printing technology and the spread of newspapers and illustrated magazines allowed the birth of modern cartoon art. Although caricature in the Ottoman Empire did not spread as quickly as in Europe, it found itself a considerable place in the second half of the 19th century.
Galata and its extension Pera were known as symbols of Europeanization in the Ottoman capital during the 19th century, where the album created by Youssouf Franko was eventuated. The caricaturist Youssouf, who lived in Pera/Istanbul, possessed a special social life with capitalists, members of the higher society, Ottoman Pashas, diplomats from Europe. Most of them became eternally recorded through the ‘types and charges’ in Youssouf Franko’s caricature album.
In the Conference Secretariat, two names were outstanding: the Chief Minister of Foreign Affairs Naum Efendi and Youssouf Franko who documented the conference, not only with his secretariat but also with his art.
Youssouf was seen at the end of the album with the cartoon above, which he called ‘Penance.’ In this cartoon, some of the characters he drew were pulling the gallows’ rope, while his family was crying (at the left side of the cartoon). Additionally, the diplomats were watching the situation impartially.
It was like a cartoon show that Youssouf played, but it was also the end. We don’t know if the cartoons caused trouble for him. What we do know is that there is no other caricature of Youssouf that appeared in this album.
Yusuf killed the cartoonist here, finished the album, and it’s game over.
