Chancellor Angela Merkel’s carefully calibrated migration deal with Turkey hangs in the balance amid an escalating row between German satirists and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ankara has demanded that Berlin launch criminal proceedings against a leading German television satirist who read out on air a provocative poem it said was designed to insult the Turkish leader. Curiously, the satirist behind the poem, Jan Böhmermann, agrees. His poem was deliberately witless and insulting and his references to Mr Erdogan’s “doner [kebab] breath” and “head as empty as his balls” designed to force precisely this reaction and force Berlin to defend his right to freedom of expression.
Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert confirmed on Monday that the government had received a verbal note from the Turkish ambassador, requesting that they examine a possible criminal case against Mr Böhmermann. Mr Seibert said on Monday that the request would be “examined carefully” in the coming days but noted that Germany’s post-war constitution protects freedom of opinion, arts and sciences.
“For the chancellor this [freedom] is clearly a most precious thing that is not up for negotiation, not internally nor externally, irrespective of whether she views something as tasteful or tasteless, successful or not,” he said of the poem, which also suggests that Erdogan loves to “repress minorities, kick Kurds and beat Christians while watching child porn”.
Long-running row
The row is just the latest volley in a long-running battle between Ankara and German satirists, who claim Dr Merkel left herself open to blackmail by pushing an EU refugee-swap deal with Turkey. That deal prompted German satire show
Extra3
to screen a song two weeks ago in which it claimed that Mr Erdogan now had Dr Merkel “where he wanted her”. The song criticised German and EU leaders for agreeing to the refugee deal, given Turkey’s crackdown on the media, its Kurdish population and even its female population: “Equal rights for women . . . they are beaten up equally” by police.
Mr Erdogan summoned the German ambassador and demanded the song be deleted. Rather than budge, Extra3 followed up with further insults. Mr Böhmermann prefaced his own show of solidarity on his Neo Royale programme by saying his poem was deliberately slanderous under German law and, could be punished and the TV programme removed.
In reaction, ZDF public television removed from the poem from repeat broadcast and from its online archive; in a phone call with the Turkish prime minister last week, Dr Merkel called it “deliberately offensive”.
The difficulty for her is that article 103 of Germany's criminal code allows a prison sentence of up to five years for someone who insults a foreign head of state. The law was last invoked in 1978 by the Shah of Iran against an article in Stern magazine. Now that it has been asked by Ankara to act, it is up to Berlin to decide whether to allow a criminal investigation to proceed in the case of Mr Böhmermann.
‘Limits of satire’
In a tweet, Mr Böhmermann said: “we’ve finally shown . . . where the limits of satire lie in Germany!”
Mr Böhmermann has attracted a huge following in recent years for his satirical attacks on Germany’s rising far-right groups and the populist Alternative für Deutschland party. His trademark double- and triple-bluff satire reached a wider European audience last year over a video clip appearing to show the ex-Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis giving Angela Merkel the finger in a public speech.
After the clip became public – and Mr Varoufakis claimed it was manipulated – Mr Böhmermann said that he and his team had digitally altered the clip to add a raised middle finger.
They hadn’t. Their admission was the joke – but the subsequent confusion sparked a debate over the risks of journalists using online materials without knowing their source, or whether they had been manipulated.
Meanwhile, Dr Merkel has to find a way to square the circle: placate Mr Erdogan without endangering the EU-Turkey migration deal and simultaneously defending German press freedom.
On Monday, the Turkish government prime minister demanded that “this outrageous man” be punished, prompting a stark reaction from Dr Merkel’s centre-left Social Democrat (SPD) junior partner.
Mr Thomas Oppermann, SPD Bundestag floor leader, said: “I find it impossible that the Turkish government has made these massive interventions . . . in a bid to limit press or media freedom.”
