Chancellor 'values Turkish deal over free speech'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been slammed by free speech campaigners after allowing a case to proceed against a comedian who insulted the Turkish president

Tayyip Erdogan had demanded that Germany press charges against Jan  Böhmermann over a deliberately provocative poem he recited on TV.

In the sketch, the comedian claims that the president has sex with goats and sheep and loves to 'repress minorities, kick Kurds and beat Christians while watching child porn'.

German law prohibits insulting foreign leaders, but it is down to the government whether to allow such cases to be pursued. If found guilty, Böhmermann could be jailed for five years.

Merkel has been accused of kowtowing to the Turks in return for their co-operation in tackling the EU refugee crisis. Erdogan's regime has clamped down on press freedoms and been accused of other human rights abuses.

Announcing that prosecutors would be allowed to investigate, Merkel said: 'Turkey is a country with which Germany has close and friendly ties.'

But she insisted her decision 'means neither a prejudgment of the person affected nor a decision about the limits of freedom of art, the press and opinion'.

However Anton Hofreiter, head of the Green party, said Merkel had made a 'political mistake', adding: 'Now she has to live with the accusation that the deal with Turkey became more important to her than freedom of speech.'

And the head of the Social Democratic Party, Thomas Operman, tweeted: 'This decision is wrong. Prosecution of satire due to "lese-majeste" does not correspond with modern democracy.'

Böhmermann deliberately provoked the legal action, telling viewers of his satirical TV show Neo Magazin Royale that 'what I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public - that would be forbidden in Germany.'

The comedian is reportedly under police protection and cancelled his last show on the ZDF channel.

A poll by Focus magazine found that 82 per cent of Germans thought the poem was defensible.
 

Published: 16 Apr 2016