BERLIN — Germany and Turkey have been locked in an intensifying war of words over the past week, as campaigning heats up before an April referendum in Turkey on a new Constitution that would expand the powers of President
Mr. Erdogan, whose critics cast him as ever more authoritarian, badly wants a victory in the vote. With the referendum on a knife-edge, he and members of his Justice and Development Party, known as A.K.P., are desperate to campaign in Germany among the 1.5 million Turks who are eligible to vote.
“There is a need for the A.K.P. to secure as many votes as possible from the Turks living in Germany — that’s the basic ingredient,” said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at Carnegie Europe, a Brussels-based think tank.
“The yes vote is now in jeopardy, therefore votes in Germany are of course very important,” he added.
BERLIN — Germany and Turkey have been locked in an intensifying war of words over the past week, as campaigning heats up before an April referendum in Turkey on a new Constitution that would expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan, whose critics cast him as ever more authoritarian, badly wants a victory in the vote. With the referendum on a knife-edge, he and members of his Justice and Development Party, known as A.K.P., are desperate to campaign in Germany among the 1.5 million Turks who are eligible to vote.
“There is a need for the A.K.P. to secure as many votes as possible from the Turks living in Germany — that’s the basic ingredient,” said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at Carnegie Europe, a Brussels-based think tank.
“The yes vote is now in jeopardy, therefore votes in Germany are of course very important,” he added.
But the campaign has put Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in a deeply awkward position. Mr. Erdogan’s opponents in Germany, both Turkish and German, say the president wants to use the freedoms of Western democracy to further consolidate his anti-democratic powers at home, and they accuse him and his men of using their right to free speech in Germany while denying it in Turkey.
Of particular concern to Germany is a German-Turkish journalist, Deniz Yucel, who turned himself in last month, was held for 13 days and last week was ordered held indefinitely, with the Turkish authorities — including Mr. Erdogan himself — labeling him a terrorist.
Mr. Erdogan and his supporters have jailed tens of thousands of people they claim supported a failed military coup against him last July. Turkey jailed more journalists than any other country in 2016, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
But both sides are now accusing each other of stifling free speech, with Turkish officials charging that they are being blocked from campaigning in Germany.
Two Turkish ministers campaigning in Germany on Mr. Erdogan’s behalf scrapped rallies last week after local German authorities said they could not guarantee security. Germany’s federal government has denied intervening in any way.
On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan accused Berlin of using Nazi tactics and threatened to stir a revolt if he decided to go to Germany himself and was somehow prevented from entering. (He previously campaigned in Germany in 2008, 2011 and 2014.)
“Some friends talked about fascism,” Mr. Erdogan said at a dinner event in Istanbul. “I was thinking that fascism is over in Germany, but it is still ongoing. It is ongoing, obviously.”
Then he added: “My brothers, now they think Erdogan is supposed to come to Germany. I would come if I want to. I could come and set the world on fire if you don’t let me come in, or you don’t allow me to talk.”
On Monday, Ms. Merkel told reporters, “One can’t even really seriously comment on such misplaced statements.”
Ms. Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, said Mr. Erdogan’s language was “absolutely unacceptable” and that the government would relay that message to Turkey.
“Concerning the rule of law, tolerance and liberalism, Germany is not to be bested,” Mr. Altmaier said.
Analysts and commentators urged calm and noted that the sparring would benefit no one. Germany and Turkey are bound by the NATO alliance, aid from the European Union and an additional European Union agreement, negotiated by Ms. Merkel and worth up to six billion euros, or $6.3 billion, if Turkey keeps refugees from fleeing across the Aegean Sea to Greece and into Central Europe.
“The most important thing is that we have no interest in a rising spiral of insults — an insult arms race, or however you want to put it,” said Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for Security and International Affairs, a government-funded think tank in Berlin. “That will not help us.”
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He predicted relations could get back on track after April 16.
In the meantime, Mr. Erdogan — labeled the “dictator on the Bosporus” by Andreas Scheuer, a leading politician in Bavaria — has come under fierce attack, and not only in Germany.
In Austria, which has a sizable Turkish minority and a strong right-wing opposition, Chancellor Christian Kern said Turkish politicians should not campaign abroad. In the Netherlands, the nationalist Geert Wilders, who leads polls for elections this month but is unlikely to become prime minister, said he would declare all of Turkey’s ministers persona non grata.
In Turkey, opposition politicians criticized the decision to block Mr. Erdogan’s allies from speaking to German Turks. The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accused Germany of hypocrisy.
“You teach democracy to the world, but you forbid two ministers from speaking with this or that excuse,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said on Friday, in comments reported by Hurriyet Daily News.
But some of Mr. Erdogan’s opponents noted the irony of the president defending his right to free speech in Europe, while eroding that of citizens at home.
Aysun Gezen, one of an estimated 4,000 academics purged from Turkish universities since the failed coup last year, said her case highlighted the Turkish government’s intolerance of dissident voices within its own borders.
“It is impossible to say that there is freedom of speech in Turkey,” argued Ms. Gezen, who was a political scientist at Ankara University before being fired last year for signing a petition that criticized the government’s actions toward Kurds. She and her fellow petitioners were accused of creating terrorist propaganda.
In addition to academics like Ms. Gezen, more than 120,000 government employees are estimated to have been fired or suspended in recent months for perceived opposition to the government.
On the day that Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, defended his opponents’ right to campaign in Germany, he also lamented his side’s inability to campaign freely in Turkey.
In an interview last week with The New York Times, he said that the whole Turkish state apparatus was being mobilized behind the yes campaign, while voices in the private news media are stifled.
State officials had made it hard for his colleagues to rent spaces for campaign events, Mr. Kilicdaroglu argued, while the police in Istanbul had failed to properly investigate claims that a group of no-campaigners had been shot at.
“We repeat the same thing 100 times, but with the problem in the media, we can’t deliver our message to the masses,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said.
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