Turkey’s foreign ministry summoned the German envoy to Ankara on Tuesday to protest over comments made by a senior German politician who likened President Tayyip Erdogan to a “little sewer rat”. “We condemn in the strongest terms the insulting statements made by Wolfgang Kubicki, the vice-speaker of the German Federal Parliament, about our president (Erdogan) in a speech during he Lower Saxony state election campaign,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a statement. (https://news.yahoo.com/turkey-summons-german-envoy-politician-140015574.html) Contacted by Reuters, Kubicki confirmed making the comment during an election campaign rally while trying to draw attention to a rise in the number of illegal migrants moving from Turkey along the so-called Balkan route towards Germany. “A sewer rat is a small, cute, but at the same time clever and crafty creature that also appears in children’s stories,” Kubicki said, citing the popular animated movie “Ratatouille” as an example. Insulting the president is a criminal offence in Turkey, where Erdogan and his ruling AK Party have held power for two decades.