A German court has banned an author from publicly reciting a poem that criticises Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The court ruled that only six lines of a 24-line poem by German comedian Jan Boehmermann were authorised to be recited, banning the remaining 18-lines over fears that Erdogan would be offended. Yahoo News reports: The poem accused Erdogan of bestiality and paedophilia and has caused a storm in Germany over freedom of speech. Chancellor Angela Merkel has come in for criticism after she authorised possible criminal proceedings against Boehmermann. Any prosecution of the comedian would be launched under the rarely enforced section 103 of Germany’s criminal code — insulting organs or representatives of foreign states — which carries up to three years in prison Last week, the affair gathered still more publicity after a lawmaker from Merkel’s Christian Democrat party recited the offending parts of the poem in parliament in a bid to condemn its content as an attack on Erdogan’s “honour”. Boehmermann’s own recital of his so-called “Defamatory Poem” on national television in March sparked a diplomatic firestorm after he admitted the work flouted Germany’s legal limits to free speech and was intended as a provocation. Merkel then authorised criminal [...]