After criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s approval of election posters for the Turkish AKP, the city of Nuremberg now wants to change the legal situation. The statute should be revised, said a spokesman for the city with a view to a special use statute.
This is intended to prevent election posters from foreign parties for elections abroad being hung up or set up in public spaces in the future. The revision will certainly take until June or July, the spokesman said.
According to the city, it had approved the hanging of 25 AKP posters as part of a special use from April 24 to May 5 in the city area outside the old town. Some of the posters were obviously removed again, said the spokesman. “But this was not by order of the city.” Since the posters do not violate the current regulations, there is no legal reason to leave the posters hanging.
Criticism of the city’s actions
At the same time, the CSU city council faction had applied for political advertising for elections and votes held exclusively abroad to be exempted from the special regulation in the future. The Greens faction in the city council announced that it would ask the city for comprehensive information about the permit. Among other things, the parliamentary group would like to know what exactly was approved and how the posters were checked in advance.
There had been criticism of the city’s actions on the Internet in the past few days. The Essen political scientist Burak Copur found that it was not a question of law, but of political attitude. In an open letter he addressed Nuremberg’s Lord Mayor Marcus König (CSU), in which he criticized the poster campaign as “ethically and morally highly reprehensible” – also with a view to Nuremberg’s past as a city of Nazi party rallies and racial laws. “Nuremberg is not just any city in Germany.” This describes itself today as a city of peace and human rights. Nevertheless, it allows propaganda to be carried out for an autocrat, he said.
The city had said on Twitter on Monday: “Because of the principle of equal treatment, we are obliged to approve such posters, provided that no criminal content can be seen on the posters. Other parties may also submit applications and posters.” But this did not exist.
Around 1.5 million Turkish people with the right to vote live in Germany. They can cast their votes for the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey until May 9th.
