The channel’s staff is diverse, bringing together individuals from various Arab nations along with Arabic-speaking Turkish TV professionals. The channel will also feature some foreign experience, with several news presenters brought in from Al Jazeera TV. In addition to this for political discussion programs, experts are being invited to Turkey from the Middle East and Arabic-speaking countries. The new TRT project, TRT Türkiye (Turkey, written in Arabic script), is to include news and documentaries covering politics, economics and cultural topics. The channel’s target audience includes Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, and viewers in other nations as far as Pakistan.
Speaking on the Arabic-language channel, TRT İstanbul Manager Şakir Özbek said the TRT Türkiye channel was a project moving in parallel to needs arising from the country’s foreign policy and other developments. This project also aims to recall the memory of the thousands of years of shared culture and relations between the Turkic and Arab peoples, he said. “We’ve lived together for many years in this region. Following World War I, there was a huge disconnect between us. We’re trying to bridge that gap now. The best way to do this is to explain ourselves and our position to them in their own language,” he said. “We’ve entered into agreements in all the Arabic-speaking countries to enable our channel to be carried there by satellite.”
TRT Türkiye has not yet has its official launch, but it is planned for Feb. 21. Following the channel’s launch, TRT also has plans for Farsi and English-language channels, with the possibility of a Russian-language channel. The channels will be launched in an order determined by need and relevance to current events and developments, Özbek said. TRT Türkiye’s broadcasting standards will be comparable to stations like the BBC, he said.
