At the end of last month, a German comedian appeared on German television and read a poem mocking Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey. Jan Böhmermann’s satire was directed, among other things, at the laws President Erdogan has been using to lock up his critics. Turkey — which David Cameron is still fighting to bring into the EU — now has some of the world’s most repressive speech laws. Numerous journalists have been arrested for ‘insulting’ President Erdogan and he has even been known to ban Twitter in the country when corruption allegations against him and his family have surfaced online.
Yet until Mr Böhmermann came on the scene, one might have expected these lèse-majesté laws to remain in Turkey. Not so. After the late-night comedy show in Germany, the Turkish government complained. Then the show disappeared. Then Mr Böhmermann disappeared under police protection. Then the prosecution began. Yes — in Germany in 2016, a comedian is now going to be tried for being rude about a foreign despot.
It is said that the German cabinet is split on the matter, with Chancellor Merkel trying to spin her own support for a trial by saying that the comedian could yet be found ‘not guilty’. Well hurrah for German justice!
As the assassin’s veto has taken hold in Europe in recent years, one of the strangest things is the way in which we now talk about free speech as if it were an abstract concept. We have endless sub-academic discussions about ‘the limits of free speech’. But free speech isn’t something you talk about. It’s something you do.
In honour of Germany’s missing comedian, I spent last weekend composing foul-mouthed poems about Mr Erdogan. After a happy 48 hours I had come up with a pretty good limerick which foully smeared not only President Erdogan but also his German counterpart for being his handmaiden.
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