Context: Hideo Kojima has been a guest star in this year’s Lucca Comics & Games in Italy.
There he met with ZeroCalcare, an appreciated italian comic artist who, among the others wrote a very good visual novel titled Kobane Calling, a depiction of his travel to Rojava to meet the kurdish resistance against ISIS.
They took a picture together, with Kojima showing the japanese edition of Kobane Calling and Kojima put this on his social media.
Then, the turkish nationalists protested against Kojma because they ranked YPG fighters as “terrorists”, to the point of asking Kojima to be arrested… As a result, Kojima removed the picture from his social media.
(Sorry for the social media post, but all other sources were either in Italian or from Turkish sites)
Maybe I’m out of the loop, but why would Kojima care about the opinion of Turkish nationalists?
Edit: or maybe a better question would be why would anyone in a position to have Kojima arrested care about the opinion of Turkish nationalists?
The backlash was probably too big to ignore without taking a clear political stance, and since it’s a very debated topic (not even the EU itself can actually decide whether it’s a “terrorist organization” or not) they probably decided it was better to remove the photo.
The post by Zero’s publisher is still up so it’s not like he wants it scrubbed, it’s probably just to avoid a PR nightmare. Could’ve been more brave but I don’t blame him tbh.
Whoops, saw the edit late.
I’m guessing it’s just Turkish journalists wanting to make the issue bigger than it actually is. There’s no chance Kojima would be arrested over a photo, and Zero even mocked the idea in his response.