Four employees of a satirical magazine in Turkey have been arrested for publishing a cartoon that appears to depict the Prophet Muhammad, a holy religious figure whose image is forbidden in Islam.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya called the LeMan magazine’s aforesaid cartoon "shameless," announcing that the editor-in-chief, graphic designer, director, and the cartoonist of this magazine had been arrested.

In a post on social media, LeMan denied that the aforesaid was a cartoon of Muhammad, saying that "the work is in no way related to the Prophet Muhammad."

Clashes erupted in Istanbul with police firing rubber bullets and teargas to disperse a mob on Monday after allegations that the aforesaid satirical magazine had published a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, The Guardian reports.

The clashes occurred after Istanbul’s chief prosecutor ordered the arrest of the editors at LeMan magazine on grounds it had published a cartoon that “publicly insulted religious values.”

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Tuncay Akgun, said the image had been misinterpreted.

“This cartoon is not a caricature of prophet Muhammad in any way,” he told AFP. “In this work, the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Muhammad. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Muhammad.”