Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Med TV, the first Kurdish satellite TV channel, began its standard broadcasts in May 1995 from its head office in London and its main studios near Brussels. It was created by people close to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which had been conducting an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984. On the one hand, this channel was seen as an instrument in the struggle against Turkish media, which were used in the conflict by the Turkish army according to “psychological warfare” requirements. On the other hand, it was seen as a means of opposing the homogenization policy of the Turkish nation-state, which banned the use of Kurdish in broadcasting. Europe, where a considerable Kurdish migrant population lived, constituted a human and material resource-base favorable to creating a satellite network in Kurdish (→  International Television ). Faced with cross-border television, the Turkish authorities began to operate a strategy whose first aspect consisted of interrupting broadcasts with the help of technical interventions. On 14 December 1995, Med TV broadcasts were stopped by a jamming transmission to the satellite hosting the signal (→  Satellite Television ). The channel's programs continued to be jammed in the years that followed, in order to prevent their reception. A second aspect of the state's strategy relied on diplomatic interventions with western countries to get ... log in or subscribe to read full text