A draft on “radio and television broadcasts in different languages and dialects traditionally used by Turkish citizens” was sent to various civil society organizations for feedback.
The most important change the new regulations will bring is that they will remove present restrictions on the content and duration of programs. According to the current rules, different programs airing in languages other than Turkish are restricted to 45 minutes a day, four hours a week on television. Radio was allowed to have programming in different languages and dialects 60 minutes a day and five hours a week.
The current rules also do not allow programs airing in languages other than Turkish to be created for children, but the new regulation will have no such restriction. One expected restriction is that broadcasting channels will not be able to air programs to teach the languages and dialects that they broadcast in. General programming will not be required to have Turkish captions, but news programs are likely to be subject to this rule.
