Iran newspaper cockroach cartoon controversy

The cockroach cartoon controversy is example of Persian (Iranian) oppression against Azerbaijani-Turkic population of Iran located at the Southern Azerbaijan region. The original cartoon, published in the Iranian holiday-magazine of Iran-e-jomee, drawn by the cartoonist Mana Neyestani. The cartoon, published in the children's section of the newspaper on 12 May 2006, allegedly insulting the Azerbaijani people by depicting a Persian child and a cockroach (metaphor used to address Azerbaijani-Turkic population of Iran).

In the cartoon 9 ways of dealing with metaphoric cockroaches are depicted. In the first method, when the cockroach does not understand the child, he then decides to talk to the cockroach in cockroach language. But the cockroach does not even understand its own language and replies by saying "namana?" ("what?"). Namana is a word which originates in the Azerbaijani-Turkic language.

The article which the cartoons accompany is entitled "How to stop the cockroaches from making us into cockroaches?" It is a satirical article in a children's weekly newspaper. The cartoon depicts nine methods of dealing with the metaphorical Cockroaches including oppression, elimination, population control, and violence. The text of the paragraph in image 1 is the first method out of nine, translated as follows:

Some people believe that one should not resort to violence as an initial step, because that will just take all the fun out of the process. So we must first try to come to the table like civilized people and have a dialogue with the cockroaches. But the problem is that a cockroach cannot understand human language [i.e., reasoned argument]. And cockroach grammar is so difficult—nobody has yet discovered which of their verbs end in "ing"--that 80% of the cockroaches themselves do not know it and prefer to speak in other languages. When even the cockroaches do not understand their own language, how could you possibly understand it?! This is precisely why negotiations hit a dead-end and the sweet methodology of violence becomes a necessity!

In the cartoon, a child tries to speak in "cockroach language" to a cockroach, but the cockroach replies "namana?" ("what?"). Namana is originally an Azerbaijani-Turkic word, but is also sometimes used in Persian as a slang. In other sections of the article where the violence option is entertained, the cockroach speaks in Persian to the Persian kid. Following the publication of the piece, Azeribaijanians in Iran, who similar to other minorities in Iran, are suffering from long lasting Persian-chauvinism, Persianification, oppression and racism against them, were insulted by this national publication. They outraged with the depiction of the cockroach as speaking Azerbaijani-Turkic and the insinuation that the Turkic-speaking cockroach "cannot understand human language."

...
Wikipedia