Jan Böhmermann. Wikimedia. CC.As Merkel and Erdoğan face off, following the so-called SchmähGedicht (Slander Poem) in which the German comedian Jan Böhmermann publicly accused the Turkish President of copulating with goats, trampling Kurds, and being a closet homosexual, the German press has erupted in a frenzy of editorials and opinion-pieces regarding the boundaries between satire and slander, freedom of speech and freedom of art.
Yet isn’t the debate about the so-called ‘Böhmermann affair’, a bit ridiculous, melodramatic even? Rarely have such lofty beliefs been dusted off so readily and to such a dramatic tune as with the Erdoğan versus Böhmermann crisis. Yet behind the dramatic rhetoric in the German press lies a less noble and more xenophobic depiction of Turkey and Turks in general as ‘Kulturfeinde’, staged as a diametrically opposed culture-clash in which Germany can sleep easily in the knowledge it has re-established its humanist credentials.
Even the otherwise rather restrained Der Spiegel, featured this week as its lead editorial (Leitartikel) the accusation that “Angela Merkel thinks the Turkish President is more important than artistic freedom (Freiheit der Kunst)”. So easily it seems we’ve transcended the debate on the freedom of speech and replaced it with the freedom of art.
