{"id":8335,"date":"2008-12-31T05:47:16","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T02:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=8335"},"modified":"2023-04-06T13:36:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T10:36:16","slug":"kurdish-tv-opens-but-picture-still-fuzzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/12\/31\/kurdish-tv-opens-but-picture-still-fuzzy\/","title":{"rendered":"Kurdish TV opens but picture still fuzzy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
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ANKARA – As Turkey\u2019s first full-time Kurdish TV Channel, TRT-6, is about to be launched, bans remain on the use of letters in the Kurdish alphabet such as w, q, and x, which are absent in the Turkish language.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The head of the Kurdish Writers\u2019 Association, \u00ddrfan Babao\u00f0lu, dismissed the channel initiative as tragicomic and said the dilemma Turkey faces now is the use of the Kurdish language, speaking to the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review yesterday.<\/p>\n

“People cannot name their children, streets, or parks in Kurdish. Just today (Sunday) in Diyarbak\u00fdr, 12 parks were opened; all their original names were in Kurdish. They were then given to the municipality and the names were changed by the district governor,” Babao\u00f0lu said. “Most of them did not even have w, q, or x in the name. I do not believe the new channel is an improvement.”<\/p>\n

The political parties law still restricts the use of these letters in election campaigns, although TRT-6’s test runs have made use of them. Democratic Society Party, or DTP, deputy Ak\u00fdn Birdal said the discrepancy was a dilemma for the Turkish state, but was optimistic about the future. “I do not doubt that more steps will be taken. This is a development in itself, but the content of the channel must be shaped in consultation with Kurds and local people,” Birdal said, adding that the channel\u2019s affect would be naught if it was used for propaganda purposes. “The Justice and Development Party (AKP) must not use the channel for leverage in the local elections.”<\/p>\n

\u00deanar Yurdatapan, a composer and a human rights activist who has received a Human Rights Watch award, also acknowledged the improvement, but lamented its tortoise pace. “The question of language was solved back in the Lausanne Treaty,” he said and cited Article 39 of Turkey\u2019s founding treaty signed in 1923. “Every Turkish citizen has the right to use the language he wants in any open meetings or publications. But there are laws like the letters code that run counter to this article,” Yurdatapan said.<\/p>\n

“It is tragicomic really, it humiliates Turkey,” said human rights attorney Yusuf Alata\u00fe, speaking to the Daily News. “People in Turkey should not have to deal with these petty events, letters and bans,” he said.<\/p>\n

Improvements still at glacial pace
\n<\/strong>Diyarbak\u00fdr\u2019s Sur district mayor, Abdullah Demirta\u00fe, was deprived of his post by a decision from the Council of State after he attempted to give municipality services in Kurdish, Armenian and Assyrian last year.<\/p>\n

Yurdatapan was pessimistic about the content of the TV channel. “My guess is that like every business carried out by the state, the aim will be to act as if something has been done, instead of really accomplishing anything. I believe we will only see state rhetoric, this time in Kurdish,” he said.<\/p>\n

The utility of starting the channel in the Kurdish language is lower than it could have been if it had started decades ago because anyone who has a satellite dish can access channels in any language.<\/p>\n

The head of Turkey Human Right\u2019s Association, or \u00ddHV, Yavuz \u00d6nen said a state-run channel in Kurdish was not the cure for problems. “After a while, it may not be watched. I believe the state does not intend to provide a basis for its people develop their own languages, but it has political motivations,” he said. TRT\u2019s channel will have to compete with other Kurdish channels for an audience, he said.<\/p>\n

“Local authorities must be allowed to deliver services in other languages. The state allows Kurdish TV on the one hand, but opens investigations against mayors who send Bayram greeting cards in Kurdish,” \u00d6nen said.<\/p>\n

The change will not come easily, especially as it is dependent on a bureaucracy that resists improvement on some issues it considers sensitive. “There is a considerable amount of resistance in some state cadres, which insist on sticking with old practices,” Alata\u00fe said. “We have heard similar criticisms, but this became a stage that led us here. Nevertheless, we have to support the new channel,” \u00d6nen said.<\/p>\n

Parliament Speaker K\u00f6ksal Toptan requested minute keepers of Parliament to refer to the Kurdish not as “an unknown language” that has been the practice since 1991, but as “a non-Turkish language.”<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA – As Turkey\u2019s first full-time Kurdish TV Channel, TRT-6, is about to be launched, bans remain on the use of letters in the Kurdish alphabet such as w, q, and x, which are absent in the Turkish language. The head of the Kurdish Writers\u2019 Association, \u00ddrfan Babao\u00f0lu, dismissed the channel initiative as tragicomic and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[247],"class_list":["post-8335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-kurdish-hizbullah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}