Erdogan: “You laughing at me kid?’’
Grab of President Erdogan from the song Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan aired on 'Extra 3' on NDR, March 17, 2016
Jokes about heads of states are not funny. An antiquated, long-forgotten law has been resurrected in Germany to silence critics and knock down the reputation of a country that places a high premium on human rights and freedom of its press. A German satirist attracted global headlines when he savagely insulted the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in lewd language.
The result was much more than he had bargained for - a legal case against him filed personally by Erdogan, with a demand for his arrest. The heated debate that ensued among the media and satirists sharpened when the German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed the prosecution to proceed against the comedian. Critics feel this portends the muzzling of free speech and emboldens authoritarian heads of states to take critics to court even in foreign lands.
It was a song about Erdogan that snowballed into a controversy. On March 17, NDR’s satirical show, Extra 3, broadcast a song accusing Erdogan of crushing protests and press freedom in Turkey. The song Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan or Erdo-how, Erdo-where, Erdogan, sung to a 1980s hit tune mocks his thousand-room presidential palace, built over a nature reserve bequeathed by modern Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The lyrics then go “Equal rights for women, beaten up equally” and accompanying video footage of women attacked by the police on March 8, International Women’s Day, is shown. “If Erdogan wants to hear criticism, he should watch Extra 3”, joked the programme presenter. “We aren’t doing it just for a laugh,” he added, explaining that the programme wanted to highlight the attack on press freedom in Turkey.
The Turkish government was not amused. It demanded that the song be deleted, never to be broadcast again. The call for the ban demonstrates the universal fact that the more you try to suppress something, the faster and further it spreads. It immediately led to German comedians intensifying their attacks against the Turkish government and the penning of a poem by German satirist and presenter Jan Bohmermann.
A few days later, on March 31, Bohmermann in his satire show on ZDF crudely mocked the Turkish leader and linked him with bestiality and the suppression of the Kurdish and Christian minorities in Turkey. During the show, Bohmermann is advised by another comedian impersonating a lawyer, that the poem does not qualify as satire and is therefore illegal. In response to massive criticism and a scandal, ZDF was forced to delete the broadcast from its archives.
Bohmermann, 34, later told the media that his poem, laced with profanities, was deliberately framed in this fashion as a test for the boundaries of satire precisely because of the Turkish government’s complaint against the earlier satirical song.
Satirist Jan Bohmermann in the ZDF show which attracted an archaic German law
Germany’s archaic law on insulting foreign leaders
Governments have a penchant for digging up archaic laws to silence critics. An obscure law which bans insults against foreign heads of state was resurrected in Germany and Erdogan filed a criminal case against Bohmermann. The Turkish Deputy Prime Minister said the poem represented a "serious crime against humanity" that had "crossed all lines of indecency." If the comedian is found guilty, he can be penalized with five years’ imprisonment or a fine.
The German law is a relic of the 19th century and is commonly known as the ‘Shah Paragraph’ owing to the fact that the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, used it to suppress criticism from the erstwhile Federal Republic of Germany. Mrs Merkel said at a press conference in April that the government planned to abolish the law with effect from 2018. Several political parties have also called for it to be scrapped following the scandal.
The affair has created a major political headache for the German government as the legal proceedings require its authorization. At a press conference in mid-April, Mrs Merkel stressed that the government’s decision to allow the prosecution of the comedian was not intended to limit freedom of the press, art or opinion.
Following the furore, Bohmermann was forced into hiding and he and his family were placed under police protection. Böhmermann told the weekly, Die Zeit, "The Chancellor has made a German Ai Weiwei out of me," a reference to the Chinese dissident artist who has spent years battling the Beijing authorities. “What amuses me most is that the leader of the country of poets and thinkers didn’t reflect for one moment on the joke or its context before she rushed to pass judgement."
The recent cover of the weekly, Der Spiegel, has a large illustration of the symbols of the Turkish flag with Bohmermann’s angry face in the curve of the moon like a noose around his neck with the words: Bose, Boser, Bohmermann (Angry, Angrier, Bohmermann).
In the UK, a Guardian editorial (April 22, 2016) commented that by allowing the prosecution of the comedian, the German Chancellor “has indulged repression abroad and tarnished her own country’s reputation for freedom”.
Pandering to Erdogan because of the refugee crisis?
It’s a quid pro quo with Turkey that has turned Chancellor Merkel ‘soft’ towards President Erdogan, say her critics. Political opponents have attacked her for ignoring Turkey's poor press freedom and human rights record in her eagerness to enlist Turkey’s in sheltering the refugees from Syria and neighbouring regions so as to stem the flow into Europe.
In return, the EU has promised money for the resettlement of refugees in Turkey, visa-free travel for Turks, and a revival of negotiations for Turkey to join the EU. Also, for each Syrian that Turkey takes back, the EU will resettle one ‘recognized Syrian refugee’ from a Turkish camp.
Three years ago, the European Court of Human Rights held that the right to the freedom of expression of a political activist who had been fined for holding up a placard telling the French president “Get lost, you sad prick” had been violated. The Court argued that criminal penalties against the activist were likely to have a chilling effect on satire as such discussions were fundamental to a democratic society.
Turkey’s increasing suppression of dissent
In Turkey, something has gone terribly wrong, feel many political analysts. Once respected in the West, President Erdogan is now accused of moving Turkey towards authoritarianism. He has been described as an ‘Islamist autocrat’ for having attacked and imprisoned many of Turkey’s liberals and Kurds and for having taken repressive actions including curfews and sending in the military forces to suppress discontent.
According to press reports, there are currently around 2,000 cases pending in Turkey in which the defendants are accused of insulting the President. Some examples of the attacks on press freedom:
- Two prominent opposition journalists were sentenced in May to five years each for spying, in a case widely criticized by international observers. The journalists, Erdem Gul and Can Dundar, are editors of the Cumhuriyet newspaper. They were accused of “threatening state security” after publishing on the front page that the state was supplying weapons and ammunitions to the Islamic rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Along with the newspaper report was video footage. According to a BBC report, President Erdogan maintained that the contents of the video footage was a state secret, and by publishing it the newspaper had engaged in an act of espionage. According to the BBC's Mark Lowen in Istanbul, Gul and Dundar have become a symbol of the erosion of press freedom in Turkey.
- Earlier, in March, Turkish police used water cannons and raided the offices of Zaman, the country’s biggest newspaper in Istanbul, and placed it under state control.
- Facebook and Twitter users have been charged for their negative comments, as have political opponents and writers.
- Ebru Umar, a Dutch feminist journalist of Turkish origin was arrested in April for criticizing Erdogan and forbidden to leave the country. Umar had criticized the Turkish consulate when it asked Turkish organizations in the Netherlands to report on social media and emails that insulted the President. According to The Guardian, Umar compared the Consulate’s call to “NSB practices”, a reference to the Dutch chapter of the Nazi party during World War II.
- German journalists were angered when the weekly magazine Der Spiegel was forced to withdraw its Istanbul correspondent.
- Recently, the European Union of Journalists condemned Turkish authorities for banning the entry of Russian journalist, T. Kerimov, the head of the Turkey Sputnik bureau. His press card was also seized.
According to Freedom House which works to defend human rights, since 2010 there has been a downward slide in media freedom in Turkey as new laws have increased the government’s censorship powers. The state authorities “aggressively” use criminal defamation laws and anti-terrorism laws to crack down on journalists.
Turkey ranks 151 amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2016.What is at stake in Bohmermann’s case, many argue, is the larger issue of violation of human rights in Europe in a culture which values freedom of political expression. With President Erdogan enjoying new leverage in the region, people fear he could export his brand of press censorship to Europe.
Rajashri Dasgupta is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata. She has worked for Business Standard and The Telegraph and is associated with Himal Southasian.