Erdogan loses appeal against German media boss
 

BERLIN: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost a German court battle against a top media boss on Tuesday when his appeal in a bitter row over free speech was thrown out.

Erdogan had sought a court order to stop the Axel Springer media group’s chief Mathias Doepfner from repeating support for a TV satirist who crudely insulted the Turkish leader.

After failing to get an injunction from a lower court last month, Erdogan also lost an appeal before the higher regional court in the western German city of Cologne.

The judges said they considered Doepfner’s letter of support "a permissible expression of opinion as protected under Article 5" of Germany’s constitution, the court said in a statement.

Erdogan could still seek recourse before Germany’s top tribunal, the Federal Constitutional Court.

The legal action came after Doepfner published in April an open letter in one of the Springer group’s newspapers, in which he backed Jan Boehmermann -- the satirist who in a poem accused Erdogan of bestiality and watching child ****ography.

Boehmermann’s recital of his so-called "Defamatory Poem" on national television in late March sparked a diplomatic firestorm and a row over freedom of expression.

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