TRT Kurdî is the first national television station that broadcasts in
Kurdish dialect of
Kurmanji and in
Zazaki. On the channels sixth anniversary it changed its name from TRT 6 into TRT Kurdi.
The channel has been mostly met with criticism from the
Kurdish population in Turkey on various grounds, including accusations of being a mouthpiece for the government. A 2018 survey asking Kurds about TRT Kurdî showed that a majority () did not trust the channel.
Opening and objective
The ban on the Kurdish language in Turkey was lifted in 2001 and legal barriers to broadcast in the language were removed the following year. In 2004, new regulations were passed, following which
TRT
The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT; Turkish : ) is the national public broadcaster of Turkey, founded in 1964. TRT was for many years the only television and radio provider in Turkey. Before the introduction of commercial radio i ...
was allowed to broadcast 30 minutes in Kurdish.
subsequently broadcast programs in Kurdish with limited duration. These limitations were later removed and TRT 6 was launched in 2009, which researcher Mesut Yeğen argues was the result of an understanding that Turkey had failed at assimilating its Kurdish minority. Both the
Nationalist Movement Party and
Republican People's Party
The Republican People's Party ( tr, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, , acronymized as CHP ) is a Kemalist and social-democratic political party in Turkey which currently stands as the main opposition party. It is also the oldest political party ...
were against this initiative and
anti-Kurdish sentiment rose among
Turkish nationalists.
In addition, an informal cause of the channel was to reduce the influence of
Roj TV Roj may refer to:
*Rój, a district in Poland
* Roj TV, a Kurdish satellite television station
* Roj Blake, the eponymous rebel leader from the BBC television series ''Blake's 7''
*Andrzej Gąsienica Roj (1930-1989), Polish skier who competed in t ...
, which was regarded as
PKK's main broadcast channel. Unlike Roj TV and other diasporic Kurdish channels, the objective of TRT Kurdî was not to serve Kurdish political nor cultural empowerment, as researcher Esra Arsan furthermore writes:
Reception
Most
Kurds reject TRT Kurdî and accuse it of being a propaganda tool to
Turkify the Kurdish population.
The members of parliament of the pro-Kurdish
Democratic Society Party (DTP) did not attend to the opening of TRT 6 at the time.
The
imprisoned leader of the
Kurdistan Workers' Party
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...
(PKK)
Abdullah Öcalan
Abdullah Öcalan ( ; ; born 4 April 1949), also known as Apo (short for Abdullah in Turkish and Kurdish for "uncle"), is a political prisoner and founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Öcalan was based in Syria from ...
also didn't support its establishment with
Murat Karayilan calling for a boycott of the channel
and its
imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan viewed it as the American imposition for a solution for the
Kurdish-Turkish conflict.
has also described TRT Kurdî as the most important propaganda tool by the
AKP on the Kurds,
and Head of the Kurdish Writers' Association Irfan Babaoğlu argued that the station was an attempt to distract Kurds from the lack of overall cultural rights.
It has been criticized as portraying the current pro-Kurdish
Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) officials in a violent manner in a TV show called ''Pivaz''.
In the show, actors play HDP officials of having ties to the
Kurdistan Workers Party (which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey) or even threatening people who visit the party headquarters of being shot.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:TRT Kurdi
Television stations in Turkey
Kurdish-language television stations
Television channels and stations established in 2009
2009 establishments in Turkey
Turkish Radio and Television Corporation