Erdogan
and the Satirist: Inside Merkel's Comedy Conundrum
Part
3: The Political Disaster
By SPIEGEL Staff
April 15, 2016 –
10:29 PM
Yet while Jan
Böhmermann's personal drama is happening quietly behind the scenes,
the political game is being played out very publicly. As it unfolds,
the Böhmermann affair of state is slowly detaching itself from its
protagonist. The satirist is merely the trigger for unfolding events.
It is others who are causing it to escalate.
Within days, what
began as resentment between two countries has become an outright
political disaster. It is one partly triggered by Merkel's spokesman,
Steffen Seibert, ironically a former ZDF journalist himself.
Following a
complaint by the Turkish government, Merkel held a telephone
conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The next
day, Seibert reported in a press conference that Merkel was of the
opinion that Böhmermann's satire text had been "deliberately
hurtful" and that she had described it as such to Davutoglu. It
was an unusual thing to say given that Seibert normally blocks
questions from journalists about Merkel's phone calls -- and the move
was intended to prevent Erdogan from taking legal measures on his
own. Four days later, it became clear that this had been a
miscalculation.
That's the day a fax
containing an official diplomatic note verbale from the Turkish
Foreign Ministry arrived in the legal department of Germany's Foreign
Ministry. In it, the Turkish government announced that it would
submit a criminal complaint in Germany against Böhmermann for
insulting a foreign head of state under Paragraph 103 of Germany's
Criminal Code, a relic dating back to the era of the Kaiser.
A Lack of Unity
Because such legal
proceedings may only be carried out if authorized by the federal
government, the ball was now in Merkel's court and the maneuvering
got underway in earnest. In formal terms, a letter from Germany's
Foreign Ministry to the responsible public prosecutor would suffice
to get things rolling. But Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
(SPD) didn't want to personally take on that level of responsibility.
He informed Merkel that he felt this was a matter for the entire
German government. The debate went on for days but no consensus
developed.
On Monday afternoon,
officials from the Chancellery, the Foreign Ministry and the Justice
Ministry met to brief each other on the latest developments. The
meeting -- led by Merkel's foreign policy advisor, Christoph Heusgen,
and Stephan Steinlein, Steinmeier's state secretary -- failed to
produce any results. In the Chancellery, officials tended to favor
allowing the criminal proceedings under Paragraph 103 to go ahead as
a way of deferring ultimate judgment to the justice system.
Berlin government
officials made the case that a precedent had been set in the case of
former Swiss Federal President Micheline Calmy-Rey, who was the last
person to successfully place a criminal complaint under the law in
Germany in 2007. After a Swiss national had posted insults about her
on the Internet in Regensburg, Germany, a German court prosecuted the
man. Besides, government officials argued, Seibert had already said
what the chancellor thought of Böhmermann's poem. How could they now
refuse Erdogan's demand?
Fear of Turkey?
There is also a
feeling in the Chancellery that Germany has shown Turkey the "cold
shoulder" in recent years and that there is an opportunity right
now to draw the country closer to Europe again. And of course there
is also a nightmare scenario: The chancellor fears that Erdogan may
scrap the refugee deal with the EU if she doesn't yield to the
Turkish demand.
The treaty is more
than just a piece of paper to Merkel -- it's proof that the refugee
crisis can be solved with means other than barbed wire. If Erdogan
were to scrap the treaty, which was so painstakingly hashed out, it
would be a significant defeat for the chancellor.
The Böhmermann
scandal also became the source this week of a serious row within the
government coalition. The SPD and the conservatives are in no way
united on the issue. In contrast to Merkel, Foreign Minister
Steinmeier does not want to yield to Erdogan on the issue. Officials
in the Foreign Ministry fear that giving in might encourage other
foreign government leaders who somehow feel offended to take similar
action. "We are skeptical about whether criminal law is the
right path here," one source close to Steinmeier says.
When leaders of the
government coalition met up on Wednesday night in the Chancellery,
they actually had more important issues to talk about than the
Böhmermann affair. Germany's new integration law was on the agenda
as was a reform of the country's inheritance tax and the Energiewende
plan to eliminate nuclear power. But that night, at 12:30 a.m., Horst
Seehofer, the head of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister
party to the CDU, asked Merkel and SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel to
private meetings.
Merkel told Seehofer
that she wanted to grant Erdogan's request. Seehofer answered that
the German people viewed the deal with Turkey very critically. "Under
no circumstances can we allow ourselves to become dependent on
Turkey," he said. But he also said he would not stand in the way
of Merkel's decision as long as she also noted when making it that
freedom of the press must also apply in Turkey.
But Merkel proved
unable to sway Gabriel during a meeting with him. This led the
chancellor to consider once again cancelling the usual Thursday noon
press conference in which the results of the coalition committee
meeting are presented. Merkel had been concerned that the Böhmermann
affair would overshadow everything else. But then she changed her
mind. At the press conference, she addressed the Böhmermann scandal
only by saying that the government was still reviewing the matter.
She didn't mention a word about the political dispute behind the
scenes that had led to the delay.
For Merkel, the
Böhmermann scandal is a debacle because it lays bare the
shortcomings of her own refugee policies. It was right to negotiate a
treaty with Turkey in order to reduce the flow of refugees, and of
course this must also entail making some concessions to the Turkish
autocrat in Ankara. Global politics, after all, is not an ethics
seminar. The problem is that Merkel made it sound as if there were no
other way for getting the refugee crisis under control than
entrusting herself to a man who has no qualms about exercising any
power he has at his disposal.
A Bow to Erdogan
Merkel's political
approach is based on finding consensus to solve problems and breaking
even the most difficult aspects of politics down into manageable
portions. This also served as her approach in the Böhmermann
scandal. She emphasized, of course, that the values of Germany's
constitution are "non-negotiable." She said: "Journalistic
freedom applies to us, but we will also demand it in Turkey." At
the same time, she snubbed Böhmermann's disparaging poem. It was a
bow to Erdogan's belief that heads of state always know best when it
comes to how far satirists should be allowed to go.
On this issue, it
will be hard for Merkel to win with anybody. In Germany, she will now
be viewed as a chancellor who has a wavering stance on artistic
freedom. With a bit of good will, one might be able to accept the
decision as having been a necessity in terms of realpolitik. But
realpolitik must also be measured against the results it produces. In
this case, Merkel's efforts at rapprochement with a man who seems to
view his country as more of a sultanate than a democracy did little
to prevent Erdogan from taking action against Böhmermann. To the
contrary: It appears that her actions encouraged him to tap all the
avenues available to the Turkish leader in the German Penal Code to
launch a legal challenge against Böhmermann for insulting him,
including personally filing a criminal complaint, which he has also
done. The move ensured that the public prosecutor would have to
investigate the case even if the federal government made the decision
not to pursue it.
The provocation
actually serves Erdogan because it will enable him to close his ranks
even further. The more effort his critics make in poking fun of him,
it seems, the more solid support among his backers grows. His efforts
to snub his opponents are a targeted political instrument that
Erdogan frequently deploys in a way that fits well with his
quick-tempered character.
Still, Turkey has a
tradition of satire and it still exists in the country. There isn't
just one Böhmermann-like case in Turkey, there are hundreds. The
situation there for satirists is so dire that most Turkish humorists
don't want to talk publicly about the conditions under which they are
currently forced to work.
"Today I talk
and tomorrow I'll be buried," says one, who prefers to remain
anonymous. "It's enough that we risk our lives with our texts
and drawings. We don't have to talk to the media as well."
For Merkel, the
Böhmermann affair comes at a bad time, just as the refugee deal with
Turkey -- a deal which she is almost entirely responsible for putting
together -- is beginning to gain traction. On Wednesday of this week,
European Council President Donald Tusk spoke before European
Parliament in Strasbourg, noting that the numbers of migrants coming
to Greece from Turkey across the Aegean Sea has dropped
significantly. In January, he said, it was 70,000 people, in March it
was just 30,000 and in April, just 1,000 people have arrived thus
far. "How many would have come in April if we had not taken
action?" he asked.the European Parliament in Strasbourg, noting
that the numbers of migrants coming to Greece from Turkey across the
Aegean Sea has dropped significantly. In January, he said, it was
70,000 people, in March it was just 30,000 and in April, just 1,000
people have arrived thus far. "How many would have come in April
if we had not taken action?" he asked.
Top Commission
officials who are critical of the deal also admit that Turkey has at
least partially upheld its end of the bargain and that the number of
refugees heading for Greece is dropping.
But there are
problems. According to Amnesty International reports, Turkey has sent
up to 100 Syrians back into Syria every day this year. "Is this
true? And if this is true, can we continue with a deal that is
against international law and against our obligations?" asked
Guy Verhofstadt, floor leader for the Group of the Alliance of
Liberals and Democrats for Europe, in Strasbourg. His party believes
Erdogan is using the deal to force Europe to back away from its
values.
"We have
already given him the keys to the gates of Europe and now we risk
handing over the keys to our newsrooms to him so that he decides and
controls our media," Verhofstadt said. Böhmermann's skit, he
said, is "not my taste in humor, but in a free society such
satirical poems must be possible. That is the price we pay for our
freedom, and we pay happily for our freedom."
With his skit, the
artist Jan Böhmermann has created a monument to himself. And even if
hardly anyone has been able to see the Erdogan number in its
entirety, it already belongs in the German Historical Museum.
By Markus Brauck,
Jörg Diehl, Dietmar Hipp, Isabell Hülsen, Hasnain Kazim, Alexander
Kühn, Nils Minkmar, Martin U. Müller, Peter Müller, Ann-Katrin
Nezik, René Pfister, Fidelius Schmid and Christoph Schult
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