Erdogan launches legal action against German media group boss

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched legal action to prevent the head of German media giant Axel Springer from repeating support for a TV satirist who insulted the Turkish leader, a lawyer said Monday.

"It's like a gang rape. When someone starts, all the others follow," Erdogan's German lawyer Ralf Hoecker, who specialises in media cases, told AFP after filing the petition in a court in Cologne.

Hoecker was referring to an open letter published in one of the group's papers in which Axel Springer's chief executive voiced support for the celebrity comedian who accused Erdogan of bestiality and watching child pornography in a satirical poem.

A spokesman for the Axel Springer group, which publishes the mass-circulation Bild newspaper among other titles, refused to comment on the matter.

Satirist Jan Boehmermann's recital of his so-called "Defamatory Poem" on national television in late March sparked a diplomatic firestorm and a row over free speech.

In a controversial move, Chancellor Angela Merkel authorised criminal proceedings against the comedian after Turkey requested he be prosecuted for his "smear poem."

During the broadcast, Boehmermann gleefully admitted his poem flouted Germany's legal limits to free speech and was intended as a provocation.

In his letter, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner took the comedian's side, declaring: "For me your poem worked. I laughed out loud."

Erdogan has come in for fierce Western criticism of late over his increasingly authoritarian rule.

It's like a gang rape. When someone starts, all the others follow. - Ralf Hoecker

US President Barack Obama has warned that Turkey's approach towards the media is taking it "down a path that would be very troubling" after two leading opposition journalists were put on trial.

In response Erdogan defiantly declared he would not take "lessons in democracy" from the West.

Hoecker, teh lawyer representing Turkey, has said he thought it unlikely that the court in Cologne would ban Doepfner from repeating his support for the comedian but added that "no Boehmermann imitators can feel safe when they insult Mr Erdogan on the Internet".

Using a hugely controversial legal article, almost 2,000 people have been prosecuted for "insulting" Erdogan since the former premier became president in August 2014.

Last month, five men were arrested for "insulting" the Turkish president and "harming his reputation".

But the leader has consistently denied cracking down on expression.