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Kurdish party slams Turkish bid to ban
Kurdish TV station
25.11.2005
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ANKARA, Nov 25 (AFP)
- 11h53 - Turkey's main Kurdish party appealed
Friday to the Danish government to resist Ankara's
bid to have a Denmark-based Kurdish TV station
banned for alleged links to armed Kurdish rebels.
"The demand to have Roj TV banned is a move to
prevent the Kurdish people's right to receive news
in their own language. It is not possible to
reconcile this initiative with freedom of press and
expression," the Democratic Society Party (DTP)
wrote in a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders
Fogh Rasmussen.
Describing the Turkish government's move as
"unacceptable", DTP leaders wrote that it was a
"contradiction" for Turkey to seek a ban on Roj TV
at a time when it must improve its rights record to
gain entry into the European Union.
Turkey has asked the Danish authorities to revoke
Roj TV's broadcasting license on grounds that it has
ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
an armed group considered a terrorist organization
by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last
week refused to attend a press conference during a
visit to the Danish capital Copenhagen because Roj
TV reporters were present.
Ankara charges that the channel, on the air since
March 2004, incites hatred by openly supporting the
PKK.
Denmark's broadcasting watchdog ruled at the
beginning of the year that Roj TV's programming
contained no incitement to hatred of Turkey and
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said Monday
that he had seen no proof of the station's links to
the PKK.
Ankara's move against Roj TV comes at a time of
increasing violence in mainly Kurdish southeastern
Turkey, where more than 37,000 people have died
since 1984, when the PKK launched an armed campaign
for Kurdish self-rule in the region.
AFP
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