German satirist Jan Böhmermann has accused chancellor Angela Merkel of sacrificing artistic freedom on the altar of political opportunism after she asked state prosecutors to open an investigation into his televised attack on the Turkish president.
Last month Mr Böhmermann read out a poem on-air in which he described president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as among other things, a child-molesting zoophile with halitosis.
His televised poem caused a diplomatic crisis between Berlin and Ankara, just as the EU needed Turkey’s support in a refugee-swap deal to curb Europe’s migration crisis.
In a bid to smooth things over, Dr Merkel told the Turkish prime minister that the poem was “deliberately insulting”. She asked prosecutors to consider two complaints from Turkey, including that the remarks breach a Kaiser-era law forbidding insults against a foreign head of state.
The Böhmermann affair has divided German public opinion, with some defending the comedian for highlighting the limits on artistic freedom in Germany. Others have distanced themselves from the comedian, saying his meta-satire was over- clever, has blown up in his face and, if found guilty, could land him in prison for three years.
In his first remarks on the affair, to Germany's Die Zeit weekly, Mr Böhmermann said his intention was not to insult but to use "clumsy cliches and prejudice" as part of a larger skit illustrating the lèse-majesté paragraph in Germany's criminal code.
“The most painful thing for me is that somebody could seriously consider me a racist or enemy of Turks because of this number, which is about the limits of freedom in Germany.”
Served up
Instead of defending his freedom of artistic expression, Dr Merkel, he said, is “filleting me and serving me for tea to a mentally ill despot”.
The comedian suggested he had fallen victim to Berlin’s determination to pursue a quick fix for the migration crisis by pursuing a “questionable pact with an unjust regime”.
“I thought it was the task of politics to ensure the necessary freedom for jokers like me to do our job,” said Mr Böhmermann, who is now living with a police guard before his home.
“But when a German government head doesn’t defend the work of a German artist, and instead declares him a bargaining chip with a wannabe dictator, that has very real consequences for my family and for me.”
The comedian took a break from his show, Neo Magazin Royal, after the offensive clip was deleted from a repeat broadcast and the online archive, though he returns to German television screens on May 12th.
Yesterday the state prosecutor in Mainz, home of Mr Böhmermann's broadcaster, ZDF, said it had not ruled out including the Zeit interview in its investigation into the comedian.
As well as the two complaints from Turkey, Mr Böhmermann said prosecutors had been flooded with complaints “in the region of high triple digits”. Still, the comedian said he was looking forward to his day in court.
“Humour versus the German government. I’m curious who will have the last laugh.”
