So the investigation into German comedian Jan Böhmermann, for “offending” Turkey’s thuggish president has gone to the next stage. As Charlie notes (with appropriate disgust), Chancellor Merkel has cleared the way for Böhmermann’s prosecution.
Lest we forget, this is the same Merkel who marched in Paris proclaiming #JeSuisCharlie.
Two things are at play.
The first is that Merkel is well aware that an angry Erdogan could send a huge number of refugees her way. Yes, the chancellor cut a cash deal with Turkey, a deal with more than a touch of Dane-Geld about it, to help ease the refugee crisis but she knows how fragile that agreement truly is:
[O]nce you have paid him the Dane-geld/ You never get rid of the Dane.
There is, of course, a certain historical irony about a German chancellor pursuing a policy of appeasement.
That said, her foreign minister, a member of the center-left SPD, has opposed Merkel over this.
The second point is that the law (against insulting another country’s head of state ) is, like it or not, on the books (Merkel has now said that it will be repealed).
In a state of law, it is not for the government, but for prosecutors and the courts to determine the balance between personal and other rights and freedom of speech and artistic expression.
As so often in her shabby career, Merkel is being misleading. Under Paragraph 104 of the German criminal code, the preconditions for a prosecution are (1) a complaint by the offended head of state (Erdogan, a reliable opponent of free speech, has obliged) and (2) the government approves. The writers of the law clearly built in a ‘political’ element.
Interestingly, Merkel’s justice minister (who’s also in the SPD) has also opposed Merkel’s decision.
And:
ZDF, the public broadcaster that decided to show Boehmermann’s recital of the poem, criticized Merkel’s thumbs-up for criminal proceedings as “a political decision.” The broadcaster has withdrawn the video from its archives, but maintains it did not break the law.
So what now? The buck will be passed to the prosecutors. They will have the lovely task of determining whether Böhmermann’s recital of a poem accusing Erdogan of (among other matters) watching child pornography and, well, getting a little too close to livestock is sufficiently insulting to merit prosecution. Or was what was said so clearly absurd that it could never be taken seriously enough to be classified as an insult?
Merkel herself has described the poem as “purposefully offensive”.
Writing in Der Spiegel, Stefan Kuzmany:
She could have thrown her support unmistakably behind Böhmermann, as one might expect from a chancellor charged with defending the German constitution. His poem was very clearly meant as satire; none of the uncomely imputations therein should be taken — nor were they meant — seriously. The chancellor, of course, knows as much. Yet by adopting Erdogan’s viewpoint, she has essentially allowed him to determine what should be viewed as satire in Germany and what not…
Merkel’s attempts at appeasement have not borne fruit. On the contrary, the entire country can now plainly see that Erdogan has put Merkel under his control and can lead her around like a big cat in the circus. And now, Germans aren’t just wide awake. They are electrified.
Merkel, though, never really had much use for an electorate that was wide awake.
Quite.
If I had to guess, Merkel will be hoping that prosecutors will drop the case. She can then explain to Erdogan that the decision was beyond her control. But if the case does proceed to trial, it will be just the latest reminder that those much-vaunted “European values” do not include free speech.
But we know that.