It baffles me that people still get this wrong. Erdoğan wasn’t the target of his satire, at least not in terms of the insults themselves, and therefore the supposed ‘quality’ of the poem is immaterial. Böhmermann himself has expressed exasperation that people take this poem at face value („Erdoğan zu beleidigen ist mir zu doof.“ – “Insulting Erdoğan is beneath me.”) and, more importantly, in isolation, disregarding the context he and his sidekick so carefully put it in.
It was an attempt to show what is not possible in Germany. This is of course mildly humiliating for Erdoğan himself, but the main effect (and, dare I say, the main intent) was to alert Germans to the precise boundaries that freedom of expression in Germany has – up until now I think it is a fair bet that most Germans thought we had “freedom of speech” but also some vague “right to not be insulted”. Böhmermann’s piece has thrown these notions into sharper relief.
