The cartoon drawing that you see near is an imaginary scene from Bashi-baozuks attacking to enemy without any clothes by famous Turkish caricaturist Bahadir Boysal.

There is a legend that Ottoman army put crazy people on to the horses naked and sent them fiercely to enemy army. The enemies couldn’t understand what the hell these strange looking, shouting horde coming to them for death and as a result, there occurred much disorder and moral fall in the army before the real battle.
Besides the legend depicted on the drawing, there was really an army of bashi-bazouks (In Turkish languages it means “Mad Head“) who didn’t obey any rules, undisciplined living without salaries. They were also mostly religious fanatics which gave horror to western countries.

The western literature and history, this term entered exactly. Even from famous cartoon Tintin series, Captain Haddock used it as a curse and argot. You can read more at Wikipedia about this unique army.

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