Friday, October 24, 2008

Turkey to begin Kurdish service in January

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that the national broadcaster, TRT, will launch a channel in Kurdish in January, Today’s Zaman reports. He said the broadcasts would initially be for 12 hours a day and that broadcasting hours would be increased later. Mr Erdogan was speaking during a visit to the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, which has a large Kurdish population.
Although the government previously pledged to launch broadcasts in minority languages this month, no concrete steps have been taken to start these broadcasts. The plans include the allocation of one of TRT’s stations for broadcasts in Kurdish, Arabic and Farsi.
(Source: Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)

Related story:
http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/turkeys-kurds-perturbed-by-delay-of-promised-kurdish-broadcasting