Turkey widens crackdown on EU free speech

Turkey has detained a Dutch journalist and issued complaints over German and Swedish projects to commemorate the Ottoman genocides.

The actions come on top of calls for legal action against Dutch and German comedians, prompting awkward questions for EU leaders.

Ebru Umar, a Dutch journalist of Turkish origin, was arrested while on holiday in Turkey on Saturday (23 April). She was later let go but forbidden to leave the country.

The arrest came after she wrote a story for Dutch daily Metro in which she compared Turkey’s effort to crack down on free speech in Europe to “NSB practices”, referring to the Dutch Nazi party in World War II, and in which she called Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan i a “megalomaniac dictator.”

She also tweeted parts of her story, leading to her arrest in Turkey, where insulting the president is punishable by up to four years in prison.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte i tweeted that he had personally contacted Umar and that the Dutch embassy was working on her release.

Dutch education minister Jet Bussemaker i told the Dutch WNL brodacster: “It is absurd that you can be arrested for a tweet.”

Rutte will this week answer MPs questions in a special debate on free speech after Turkey called for the prosecution of a Dutch comic and after the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam called on Turkish expats to report Erdogan insults.

The free speech row first erupted in Germany after chancellor Angela Merkel approved a Turkish request to prosecute German satirist Jan Boehmermann for an obscene poem about the Turkish leader.

Widening the scope of its EU dragnet, Turkish officials over the weekend also issued complaints to German orchestra and a Swedish TV channel over two projects on the Armenian genocide.

Markus Rindt, the director of the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra, told German media that Turkey’s EU embassy had asked the European Commission to pull a €200,000 grant for his 30 April concert.

The event, to mark the 101st anniversary of Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, is to contain sung and spoken texts that use the term genocide, which Turkey denies.

Rindt said the commission upheld the grant but deleted its online advert for the project. He described the Turkish pressure on the EU as “an infringement on freedom of expression.”

The Turkish embassy to Sweden at the weekend also wrote an email to the TV4 channel asking it “reconsider” broadcasting a documntary film, Seyfofilmen, on the genocide because it contained “one-sided views.”

“This development, we can never accept. We will protest against any attempt to exert pressure that threatens freedom of expression,” TV4 said in a statement.

German justice minister Heiko Maas in an interview with the Die Welt daily on Saturday urged Merkel to send the message to Ankara that: “Opinion, art and freedom of the press are not negotiable in a state of law, and we advocate that our partners ensure this as much as we do.”

But the chancellor, who visited Turkey at the weekend together with EU Council chief Donald Tusk i and an EU commssioner, Frans Timmermans i, was less outspoken.

Asked about the free speech controversy in a press briefing, she said: “It has been said more than once that we’re not talking about these issues because we’ve become to some extent dependent on Turkey.”

Her remark on "dependence" refers to an EU-Turkey deal on taking back migrants from Greece. She said that EU leaders talk about the subject “in a frank and open manner” every time they meet their Turkish counterparts.

She said it’s normal that the EU and Turkey haven’t yet come to an accord. “The same is true of talks between some countries inside the European Union,” she said.

See no evil

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu i, speaking alongside Merkel, defended Turkey’s interventions in Germany and the Netherlands.

He said “in recent times some extreme, racist views have been on an upward trend in Europe … very heavy insults about the president of a country, that one shouldn’t hear.”

He said he values free speech but not if it should “negate respect for human dignity.”

He noted that if the EU wants its voice to be heard in Turkey it should first accept it into the “European family”, referring to EU accession.

“You do not have the right to bombard Turkey with endless questions coming, as it were, from a position of authority,” he said.

He denied that Turkey restricts free speech by reference to its four recent elections. “No one could claim there was a problem with exchange of opinions and sharing one’s opinions,” he said.

International election monitors, the ODIHR, said in each of their reports on the last four votes that “media freedom remained an area of serious concern.”

But neither Merkel, Timmermans, or Tusk pulled up Davutoglu on his claim.

Turkey has indicted almost 2,000 people for insulting Erdogan. It recently shut down its leading opposition paper, Zaman. It has also jailed dozens of Erdogan-critical journalists often on terrorism charges.