TRT Kurdî

The ban on the Kurdish language in Turkey was lifted in 2001 and legal barriers to broadcast in the language were removed the following year. In 2004, new regulations were passed, following which TRT was allowed to broadcast 30 minutes in Kurdish.[1] Turkish Radio and Television Corporation subsequently broadcast programs in Kurdish with limited duration. These limitations were later removed and TRT 6 was launched in 2009, which researcher Mesut Yeğen argues was the result of an understanding that Turkey had failed at assimilating its Kurdish minority. Both the Nationalist Movement Party and Republican People's Party were against this initiative and anti-Kurdish sentiment rose among Turkish nationalists.[2]

In addition, an informal cause of the channel was to reduce the influence of Roj TV, which was regarded as PKK's main broadcast channel.[3][4] Unlike Roj TV and other diasporic Kurdish channels, the objective of TRT Kurdî was not to serve Kurdish political nor cultural empowerment, as researcher Esra Arsan furthermore writes:[2]

In the case of TRT 6, Kurdish culture can only exist within the context of the Turkish state, and Kurdish culture is inferior to the larger political framework of the ‘mosaic republic’ in which all citizens are Turkish in the first place.

— Arsan

Most Kurds reject TRT Kurdî and accuse it of being a propaganda tool to Turkify the Kurdish population.[2] The members of parliament of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (BDP) did not attend to the opening of TRT 6 at the time.[1] OdaTV has also described TRT Kurdî as the most important propaganda tool by the AKP on the Kurds,[5] and Head of the Kurdish Writers' Association Irfan Babaoğlu argued that the station was an attempt to distract Kurds from the lack of overall cultural rights.[2] It has been criticized to portray the current pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) officials in a violent manner in their TV show.[6] In the show, actors play HDP officials of having ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party which is classified a terrorist organization by Turkey) or even threatening people who visit the party headquarters of being shot.[6]