Turkey’s President launches fresh legal action against German satirist

Turkish President

Prosecutors in the western German city of Mainz said recently that they had dropped an investigation into Jan Boehmermann for insulting Erdogan in a case that raised tensions between Ankara and Berlin.

However, Erdogan indicated that he was not prepared to accept the Mainz prosecutor’s decision and instead lodged a fresh complaint against Boehmermann, which is now to be heard by the Rhineland-Palatinate state’s General Prosecutor’s Office.

In April, the German government approved criminal proceedings against Boehmermann for reciting a crude poem on broadcaster ZDF in which he said Erdogan watched child pornography and performed sex acts with animals.

The investigation was carried out under Germany’s defamation law and a little-used statute against insulting foreign heads of state, prompting a heated debate about the limits of free speech in Germany.

Meanwhile, officials said that the Koblenz-based General Prosecutor’s Office would examine the case files.

However, they declined to outline how long the new process would take, saying only that they will make the deliberations public in due course.