Germany lets prosecutor consider charges for poem about Turkey’s Erdogan

Late-night comedy sketches featuring a German song and a follow-up poem making fun of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have created a diplomatic rift, and left German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the position of angering her own nation but not quite appeasing Turkey.

It’s another example of a clash in values between NATO allies that roils Turkey’s relationship with Europe in the midst of negotiations to stanch the flow of refugees from Syria and elsewhere.

It began March 17 with a late-night skit that featured a song with the refrain of “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan.” The song, played in front of a background of news footage, notes among other things, “He hates the Kurds like the plague, and bombs them rather than the brothers of the Islamic State.”

Erdogan had the German ambassador to Turkey summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry to hear their displeasure with the song.

The Germans stood their ground. The ambassador explained that the skit was political satire, and as such protected by Germany’s free-speech laws. The Turkish government grumbled but appeared to accept the explanation.

The attempt at a diplomatic dressing-down led to a substantial amount of comment in Germany and a flood of jokes at the expense of the famously prickly Erdogan. Among them was a poem, read from a comedy-sketch faux news desk, after the news anchor explained that while satire is protected under German law, something called “abusive criticism” is not.

Then comedian Jan Boehmermann launched into a verse that could only be described as abusive. It made reference to the smell and size of Erdogan’s private parts and to his alleged sexual activities with goats, sheep, whips and rubber masks. The most printable part of the poem accused Erdogan of “oppressing minorities, kicking Kurds and beating Christians, while watching child porn.”

In German, it all rhymed.

Boehmermann even advised Turkish officials how to make an official complaint, including which attorney Erdogan might want to hire.

The Turks, from Erdogan on down, weren’t walking away so easily this time.

Erdogan responded by lodging a personal criminal complaint with prosecutors in Mainz, the city where the comedy show is based. He cited Paragraph 185 of the German penal code, accusing the comic of slander, a crime that carries a five-year prison term.

And that wasn’t all.

The Turkish government also asked the German government to prosecute under Paragraph 103 of the penal code, which bars insulting a foreign head of state. That law carries a potential three-year prison sentence, but it requires the approval of the German government to make it to court.

That’s when, in the view of the German media, Merkel made a mistake. She was talking with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu about the poem and, in what is thought to be an attempt to defuse the situation through empathy, agreed that Boehmermann’s verse “was a deliberately offensive text.”

After all, Merkel is a frequent target of the comedy shows and had been in a similar situation many times.

But the statement, from a Turkish perspective, appeared to be an admission of German guilt. The Turkish government demanded a follow-through.

On Friday, Merkel agreed to let the German prosecutor consider the charge.

“In the state of the law, it is not the matter of the government but of prosecutors’ offices and the courts to weigh the personal rights of the person concerned against the freedom of the press, and art,” she said. She also noted that she would ask the German parliament to strip that paragraph from the penal code.

Thomas Oppermann, the floor leader of Merkel’s coalition partner Social Democrats in the Bundestag, was quick to criticize.

“I consider the decision to be wrong,” he said. “Prosecution of satire on grounds of offense against a sovereign does not fit into a modern democracy.”

Another recent skit

“He closes the borders to Mexicans and every Muslim. That’s what they love him for. . . . A rich psychopath who makes xenophobia socially acceptable, who laughs about handicapped people, a freak named Trump, the fat pants (meaning one who pretends to be rich) Trump.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Germany lets prosecutor consider charges for poem about Turkey’s Erdogan."