Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) has appointed two experts at the council’s centre in Ankara to monitor programmes broadcast in the Kurdish dialects of Kurmanji and Zaza on television channels.
Kurmanji and Zaza-speaking experts were originally appointed to the council in 2007 after Turkey allowed broadcasts in different languages and dialects in 2006. The two experts will now monitor the broadcasts of five television channels in Kurmanji and Zaza through a system named the Digital Recording, Archiving and Analyzing System (SKAAS). RTÜK monitors all broadcasts in Turkey and will assign more staff to this specific task if necessary.
Radio stations broadcasting in languages other than Turkish will be monitored regularly by RTÜK’s Diyarbak?r Regional Directorate. The police department will also contribute to the monitoring as a result of a protocol signed with the Interior Ministry on keeping track of broadcasts in different languages and dialects.
Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) began broadcasting in Kurdish on its TRT 6 channel on 1 January, 2009. RTÜK has discussed applications from several radio and TV channels that want to broadcast in different languages and dialects under the relevant regulation, and 14 institutions have been permitted to broadcast in Zaza, Kurmanji and Arabic.
(Source: Today’s Zaman)
