In the latest criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Europe, Dutch daily De Telegraaf has published a controversial caricature on its front page depicting Erdogan as an angry ape squashing a slim woman resembling Dutch-Turkish columnist Ebru Umar as a reference to his crackdown on freedom of the press.
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Called “The long arm of Erdogan,” the cartoon shows the Turkish president standing on a rock labeled “Apenrots,” Dutch for “ape rocks,” RT reported Tuesday.
The word is also used to refer to a place in The Hague where the Dutch Foreign Ministry’s premises are located.
The cartoon follows the case of Dutch reporter Umar, who was arrested Saturday over tweets the government say “insulted” President Erdogan.
Under Turkish law, insulting the president of the republic is a crime and Erdogan and his legal team have been accused of exploiting the law in order to crack down on critical media and journalists.
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Umar was released Sunday pending her trial, but she now has to remain in Turkey in order to report to police.
Her case comes less than a week after Erdogan filed a lawsuit against German comedian Jan Bohmermann for reciting a poem during an episode of his TV program. Ankara has also labelled the poem insulting.
Such cases by foreign governments have to be approved by Berlin to allow prosecution. A few days after Erdogan requested the suit against the TV celebrity, Chancellor Angela Merkel greenlighted his prosecution amid a major backlash from the German public and media.
But critics accuse Merkel of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Turkey, including the crackdown on the country’s Kurdish population, because European governments depend on Turkey to stop the refugee influx into the continent.
Also on Monday freelance correspondent David Lepeska, who has written for The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Foreign Affairs said immigration officers at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport informed him that an "entry ban" had been placed on his visa. He was denied entry and put on a flight back to the United States.
NATO member and European Union hopeful Turkey ranks 151st out of 180 nations in Reporters Without Borders' 2016 World Press Freedom Index.