The lawyer for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has raised objections following a German prosecutor’s decision to abort an investigation into comedian Jan Böhmermann for reading an insulting poem about Erdoğan.
Böhmermann had read an offensive poem about Erdoğan on ZDF TV in March, which led to the delivery of a diplomatic note to Germany from the Turkish government. Turkey had asked the German Foreign Ministry to put Boehmermann on trial on charges of “insulting a representative of a foreign state.”
During his weekly “Neo Magazin Royal” show, Böhmermann read a poem that included crude sexual jokes about Turkey’s president. A Mainz prosecutor in April had said the office had received some 20 complaints from “private individuals” about Böhmermann’s poem, automatically triggering the opening of preliminary proceedings. The German government approved an investigation into the comedian for insulting a foreign leader.
However, last week the Mainz prosecutor released a statement saying that there are not sufficient grounds for a criminal investigation into the comedian, upon which Erdoğan’s lawyers submitted an objection. The office of the prosecutor announced that Erdoğan’s objection would be evaluated by the main prosecutor’s office in Koblenz.
