French satellite halts Kurdish TV channel's broadcast

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The French satellite provider Eutelsat halted the broadcast of the Belgium-based Kurdish MedNuce TV channel on Monday, upon requests by the Turkish Government.

The Turkish Government accused the Kurdish news channel of being a mouthpiece for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that is waging a guerrilla war for Kurdish rights in Turkey.

The European Union that Turkey has an application to accede designates the PKK as a terrorist organization.

MedNuce, which continues its broadcast online, airs in Kurdish dialects and Turkish, largely targeting an audience in Turkey.

French Eutelsat’s dropping of the Kurdish channel comes amid reports of closures of Kurdish and pro-Kurdish TV and radio networks.

Last week, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) took down 12 TV channels from the national satellite network Turksat with accusations of “doing propaganda for terrorism.”

One of the channels closed was Turkey’s sole Kurdish childrens’ channel, Zarok TV.

Several Kurdish TV channels have been broadcasting from European countries since the mid-1990s because of Turkey’s restrictions on language and media.

In 2012, the Denmark-based Kurdish Roj TV was banned and taken off the air by a Danish court after pressure from Turkey.

The ban came after an initial Turkish veto on the former Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s bid to become the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance in 2009.

According to the United States diplomatic cables leaked, the whistleblower group Wikileaks Turkey, as a NATO member, used the closure of the Kurdish TV as a bargaining chip with Denmark to allow Rasmussen to become NATO chief.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany