About the work
A play by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, written at the age of 21 after the novel "Kızıl Pençe" (Red Claw) by the Islamist preacher Mustafa Bayburtlu; in 1975 Erdoğan also directed the production and took a leading role. The title is an acronym of "Mason, Komünist ve Yahudi" (Freemason, Communist and Jew). Until the 1980 military coup, the play was performed nationwide across several Turkish provinces by Islamist youth groups.
Plot
The play centres on the secular factory owner Ayhan Bey, whose foreign-educated son returns home having abandoned his faith, tearing the family apart. In a parallel plot, a Jewish worker posing as a Turkish Muslim incites the factory's workforce against its owner; the workers seize the plant and murder Ayhan Bey.
Cultural significance
In 2012, Der Spiegel described the play as antisemitic; its plot draws on widespread conspiracy narratives against Jews, Freemasons and communists that circulated within Turkey's Islamist youth movement of the 1970s. That the future prime minister and president wrote, directed and starred in the play himself makes it one of the best-documented early stage works by a future head of state.