Greek man wins £175,000 over Turkish yogurt picture

A Swedish dairy has paid out over £175,000 in compensation to a Greek man whose picture was used to promote a popular Turkish yogurt brand. The 77-year-old man, who was angry at being portrayed as a Turk, the traditional national enemy of Greeks, originally demanded £4.5 million in damages for the use, without permission, of his image.

His photograph, with distinctive long mustache, red hat and traditional Greek dress, has been used on millions of yogurt tubs marketed as a Turkish-style product. Yesterday, Sweden's Lindahls dairy confirmed that an agreement had been reached and a six figure payment made to avoid an emotive court case in the man's native country, where damages could be higher.

Tomas Axelsson, a spokesman for the dairy, said: "We have always maintained that we had the rights to the image, but now we have settled the issue and plan to continue to use it on the product." Anders Lindahl, the family owned managing director of the dairy, said that the image had been legitimately bought from a photo agency. "It is a lot of money," he said. "We have invested a lot in him as a trademark during the past eight years."

The Greek found out that his picture was being used to sell Turkish-style yogurts after a friend, a fellow countryman, recognized his face on supermarket shelves in Stockholm. In his legal writ in April, the man, who has not been named, argued that he is not Turkish and that the use his picture was misleading both for those who know him and for buyers of the yogurt.