Turkey begins countdown to first Kurdish-language TV channel

New programs will take on rebels but also heralded as overdue step toward improving minority rights

ANKARA (AP) – Turkey will launch its first 24-hour television channel broadcasting in the once-banned Kurdish language next week in an apparent attempt to cut support for Kurdish rebels fighting for autonomy in the country’s southeast.

Analysts say the state-run news channel is aimed at drawing viewers from the Kurdish Roj TV, a satellite station based in Belgium that is popular with many of the country’s estimated 14 million Kurds but has angered Turkey for broadcasting statements by rebel commanders.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, has been fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey since 1984.

The state-run channel, which launches on January 1, marks a change of policy in a country where speaking Kurdish was banned until 1991. Under pressure from the European Union to strengthen the rights of minority Kurds, state television began broadcasting documentaries and news in Kurdish in 2004 but only for about 30 minutes each week.

Turkey is seeking to weaken the rebels who have criticized the government for a lack of broadcasts in the Kurdish language, said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst based at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Ankara and an expert on the rebel group.

“Turkey is changing its policy on Kurdish language broadcasts to cut support to the rebels and create an alternative to Roj TV,” said Ozcan. “At the same time, Turkey is meeting Kurdish demands for more cultural rights under pressure from the European Union.” Several stations based in Iraq and Iran already broadcast in Kurdish and can be seen in Turkey, according to Kurdish leaders.

However in Turkey, only state-run television will be allowed to broadcast around-the-clock in Kurdish, the language of a minority that makes up about 20 percent of Turkey’s population of more than 70 million.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to inaugurate the station. It will broadcast news, music, serials, films and comedy programs.

“We are not engaging in social engineering,” said Sinan Ilhan, a senior official at the new station, TRT 6. “We will try to reflect the mosaic and colors of our society.”

Many Kurds welcome the new station but said it took too long to put in place. “There are close to 10 stations that broadcast in Kurdish from Iraq or Iran,” Mehmet Kaya, the head of the trade chamber for Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-inhabited city, told Radikal newspaper. “This is a practice that has been delayed.”

Sedat Yurttas, a former Kurdish legislator, said it was an important step and “the result of the Kurdish people’s struggle” for greater rights for Kurds, a non-Arab people distantly related to the Iranians.