TRT TO LAUNCH NEW CHANNEL IN ENGLISH

The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation will work on launching a channel in 2011 that will broadcast in English, TRT General Manager Ibrahim Sahin has said. Having announced that they will have a new education channel by January, he noted that they would focus on launching a separate channel in English, which, he added, is akin to a “national duty” for them. “This is because Turkey has grown so large and become an effective power in its region. We, however, cannot publicize that because promoting it to non-Turkish speakers can only be in English. It is a universal language now. Everyone understands at least a little of it. We can now say all countries have established a channel [in English] and started promoting it like that. I think we lag a little behind in that regard,” Mr Sahin said. TRT has been engaged in an intensive campaign to start broadcasting in non-Turkish languages. As part of that campaign, two separate stations broadcasting in Kurdish and Arabic were launched in the past two years.