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Denmark, again? Now it's under fire for
hosting Kurdish TV station
21.4.2006
By Yigal Schleifer
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Turkey says the satellite network Roj TV is a
mouthpiece for Kurdish terrorists.
DIYARBAKIR, KURDISTAN-TURKEY – From her small
apartment in this ancient city, Rabia Celikmilek has
access to the entire world. A satellite dish on the
roof of her crumbling brick building streams 452 TV
channels, with programs from almost every continent.
But Ms. Celikmilek, a Kurd who doesn't speak
Turkish, says she only watches Roj TV, a Kurdish
channel based in Denmark.
"Roj TV reflects the emotions of the Kurds, our
opinions. It's a mirror of the Kurds," says the
mother of 10 as she watches the station's 7 p.m.
news broadcast.
It's the third time a Kurdish satellite station has
tried to beam news into Turkey, whose laws restrict
Kurdish programming within the country. The first
two were shut down. Now the Turkish government is
lobbying Denmark to rein in Roj, accusing the
two-year-old station of being nothing more than a
mouthpiece for Kurdish terrorists.
"We know for sure that Roj TV is part of the PKK, a
terrorist organization," says a Turkish foreign
ministry official, referring to the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which battled
Turkish troops during the 1980s and '90s in a bloody
separatist fight that took the lives of more than
30,000. "[The PKK] is listed as a terrorist
organization by the EU. Denmark is a member of the
EU, and we would expect that the broadcasting
organization of a terrorist group would not be given
a free pass."
Asked for evidence of this link, the foreign
ministry official says only that Roj had released
the names of slain PKK guerrillas before the Turkish
authorities had released their identities, implying
the station must have a direct connection with the
PKK. Turkey has also accused Roj of helping incite a
three-day outbreak of violent protests in the
southeast earlier this month, and says it has
provided the Danish government with documentation to
prove the station's link to the PKK.
Denmark, meanwhile, finds itself wrapped up in yet
another sticky freedom-of-the-press debate. Although
nothing compared to what took place during the furor
over the prophet Muhammad cartoons first printed by
a Danish newspaper, Denmark's embassy in Ankara -
Turkey's capital city - has been receiving a steady
stream of angry letters and e-mails from Turks
incensed by the country's hosting of Roj TV.
The issue even sparked a mini crisis in Copenhagen
last fall, when Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan boycotted a press conference with his Danish
counterpart, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, because a
reporter from Roj was in the room.
"Surely [the Roj TV affair] is not something that
helps to improve relations," admits Anders Christian
Hoppe, Denmark's ambassador to Turkey. But Mr. Hoppe
declined to comment on whether Denmark was taking
any steps to investigate or shut down the station.
"The [Danish] government's position is that, just
like in Turkey, this is a matter for the courts.
Governments in Western countries, including Turkey,
do not interfere with the courts," the ambassador
adds.
"It is being investigated by the police, the
government. We have been given material by the Turks
and it has been very helpful." The first Kurdish
satellite channel, Med TV, was licensed in Britain.
But the British closed it in 1999, saying it had
incited violence. The second attempt, Medya TV, was
licensed by France and closed in 2004 because it was
deemed to be the successor of Med TV.
Roj appears to be treading more cautiously than Med
TV and Medya TV, mindful that they were shut down.
But it's clear they have open access to the PKK,
whose fighters and leadership are holed up in the
mountains of northern Iraq. The station frequently
airs footage provided by the organization of its
guerrillas in action against Turkish security
forces. Its news programs also feature frequent
updates about imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan,
a reviled figure for many Turks.
Manouchehr Tahsili Zonoozi, a Kurd from Iran who is
the station's general manager, acknowledges that the
station maintains contact with the PKK, but says it
is not controlled by it.
"We are an independent Kurdish broadcaster. Our job
is to be journalists," he says, speaking by
telephone from the station's studios in Denmark.
Mr. Zonoozi also rejects the Turkish claim that Roj
helped incite the recent violent protests in Turkey.
"If I am going to be [blamed] for what happened in
Istanbul or Diyarbakir, then you should [blame] Le
Figaro for [the recent riots that] happened in
France. I'm sorry, but that is rubbish," Zonoozi
says.
"We are very popular, and that's hard for the
governments in the region."
Until the recent introduction of reforms that are
part of Turkey's push to join the European Union,
local stations in the country were forbidden from
broadcasting programs in Kurdish. But limits remain.
Stations are only allowed to broadcast in Kurdish
for four hours a week, cannot air children's
programs, and must avoid "political" subjects -
though it's up to managers to interpret what that
means.
Deniz Gorduk, news manager of Gun TV, a local
Diyarbakir station, says Roj - which, among its
various programs, shows children's cartoons in
Kurdish - fills a vacuum created by the Turkish
government's controls.
"There are so many limits on us and that is why Roj
TV is so popular," he says.
In the increasingly restive southeast of Turkey,
where satellite dishes now adorn even the humblest
village homes, the Turkish government's efforts to
shut down Roj TV are now being added to the list of
grievances. In January, more than 50 mayors from the
region sent a letter to Denmark asking it to keep
the station on the air.
"When Roj TV started, it was like a sun rising,"
says Ali, a tailor who asks that only his first name
be used. "We only have Roj TV and now Turkey wants
to shut it down."
cs monitor.com
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