Turkey’s state radio (TRT) will launch an Armenian-language channel, reports said on Friday in the latest in a series of planned foreign language broadcasting mediums being launched by the state. The move comes as Ankara and Yerevan have been engaged in a normalization process between the neighbouring countries that for decades have had no diplomatic relations.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan also said Wednesday that state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corp (TRT) would launch a radio station broadcasting in Kurdish. The radio channels broadcasting in Armenian and Kurdish will go on air in “two to three months”, Reuters and CNNTurk reported, citing Anatolian Agency.
“At this stage, we will refrain from any comments,” an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters when asked about the report of the planned radio station on Friday.
TRT also plans to launch a Persian TV channel and a news channel broadcasting in English next year, Friday’s reports added.
Turkey recently took steps to boost the cultural and democratic rights of Kurds with the 1 January launch of TRT-6, a TV channel that airs in Kurdish 24 hours a day.
(Souce: Hürriyet)
The beginning of radio transmissions in the Armenian language in Turkey is merely political step, an Armenian expert said. “Turkish authorities signal Yerevan that they are ready to continue the process of normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations,” Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute, told PanArmenian.Net. Assurances of fulfilling commitments to the European Union on national minorities’ rights protection are meaningless words, according to him.
“There are many national minorities in Turkey but neither of them has a radio channel in native language. Kurds are an exception, as there are millions of Kurds in the country and this problem is pressing,” Iskandaryan said, adding that this initiative might be linked to the impending visit of US President Barack Obama to Turkey.
According to Anatolian Agency, the first program will be broadcasted on April 24 when Armenians all over the world commemorate victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
(Source: PanArmenian.net)
on Mar 26th, 2009 at 15:23
Hürriyet reports that two countries for decades have had no diplomatic relations. Actually they never had those relations Broadcasts in Armenian are really more of a symbolic gesture. That is kind of similar to Polish Radio broadcasting in Hebrew.