TRT-Turkey is planning to set aside one of its five channels for broadcasts in non-Turkish languages used by Turkish citizens, most notably Kurdish, reports Today's Zaman.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has decided to go forward with new efforts to expand broadcasts in Kurdish amid criticism that the government's reform process has encountered a serious slowdown.
TRT General Manager Ibrahim Sahin said it had not yet been decided exactly how the foreign language broadcasts would be carried out but that most likely an entire channel would be devoted to Kurdish broadcasts.
Mr Sahin said: "This channel will start broadcasting as soon as possible. We don't have an exact date yet, though." He added that the TRT board was already at work on coming up with the content of the Kurdish programming.
TRT, the national public broadcaster, is currently planning to either dedicate one of its current channels to full day Kurdish language broadcasts, or to have these broadcasts aired on a new TRT channel. (ABU 21 Feb via Yimber Gaviria-CLM)
Some changes for Voice of Turkey:
all times UTC
1200-1257 new freq 11750 EMR 500 kW 072 deg x12050 in Chinese from Feb.25
1600-1657 9705*CAK 500 kW 104 deg new language-Pashto from Mar.21
*co-ch La Voix du Sahel in French + RRI in Russian
(R BULGARIA DX MIX News, Ivo Ivanov, via wwdxc BC-DX Feb 29)
(Source: WWDXC Top News/BC-DX #849; via wb, Germany)