Erdogan’s wrath against satire expands into Europe
After jailing and suppressing journalists in his country, will Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s onslaught on free speech in Europe backfire?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not known to be humorous or sympathetic toward those who lampoon him. His anger toward the most innocuous of caricatures surfaced shortly after he became prime minister in 2003. In one of his first acts, which set the tone of his relationship with the press, Erdogan took the daily Cumhuriyet to court for depicting him as a cat entangled in yarn in a cartoon.
Erdogan lost that case, but his wrath toward critics in and out of the media never diminished. The Turkish president has opened 2,000 cases against journalists, artists and ordinary citizens he accuses of insulting him or members of his family.
The matter took on a Kafkaesque turn recently when a man in Istanbul accused of severely beating his fiancee defended himself in court by saying he had beaten her because she insulted Erdogan.
Erdogan’s wrath for those satirizing him has reached new heights and gone international. Using an obscure law, Erdogan recently brought charges in Germany against comedian Jan Boehmermann for insulting him in a poem.
