European Court of Human Rights : Dickinson v. Turkey

In a case about a satirical collage insulting the Turkish Prime Minister, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that the criminal proceedings against the author of the collage violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Court is of the opinion that the collage contained a political statement, criticising the Turkish Prime Minister for his policy on the international scene with regard the military actions by the USA, and in particular those in Iraq. The cartoonish collage clearly expressed a value judgment about an issue of general public interest related to a country’s foreign policy. The criticism was directed against the public functioning of the Prime Minister, and had a sufficient factual basis. Although the depiction of the Prime Minister as a dog in a collage was likely to be perceived as degrading and humiliating by a part of the population in Turkey and might have created some unease among citizens, in the context at issue a cartoonist is permitted to resorting to a certain amount of exaggeration and even immoderate provocation