Creator of ‘Girgir’, the world’s third largest-selling humor magazine, and pioneer of the Turkish comic strip for forty years, Oguz Aral has had his last laugh.

T here are long lines of people today—waiting to get jobs, to apply to the universities, to claim their monthly pension. For years comparable lines formed weekly in front of the ‘University of Cartoons’, where the humor magazine ‘Girgir’ was published. Enthusiasm ran high among the young cartoonists who came from all over Turkey, waiting their turn to show their work to Oguz Aral, whom they regarded as a big brother.
Since I was always too busy writing, I never once got a chance to sit down and exchange two words with him. But the overwhelming impression I got from my friends at the magazine and the people who lined up to see him was that he was a master who commanded the highest respect. Attracting hundreds of kids from low and middle income families off the streets and out of the coffeehouses, he took them seriously and encouraged them with praise.