Friday, July 18, 2008

Hayat* can not be silenced

TURKEY

The broadcasting of Hayat TV was cut off by Turkish government. Hayat TV, which started its life last year with the slogan “Life’s all colours”, found itself unable to broadcast suddenly on Wednesday.

Hayat TV did not receive any legal warning about the interruption. But, the letter to the company from which Hayat TV rent the frequency band was clearly threatening. Turksat general manager’s letter to Turkovizyon, from which Hayat TV rents its frequency band, states that the demand to cut Hayat TV’s broadcasting came from the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK): “In order that Turkovizyon’s broadcasting activities are not shut down completely by our company, we request that you interrupt Hayat TV’s broadcasting immediately and be more sensitive about the channels you will include in your digital platform.”

But we know that, this is an indication of the impatience of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). However, since we experienced similar experiences in the past, Hayat is still on its job. They cannot shut Hayat up, we will not shut up.”

We trust the viewers of Hayat, who are the real force behind it.

We call all of our class brothers and sisters, intellectuals and artists struggling for a better world around the globe to claim Hayat as their own channel and support it.

For support

You can send protesting letters to the Internal Affairs Ministry of the Turkish Republic (Fax: 0090 312 418 795), Radio and Television Supreme Council (Fax: 0090 312 499 5115) and Türk-Sat (Fax: 0090 312 499 5115)

Also, we wait for your solidarity messages.

What is Hayat TV?

Hayat TV, the pro-people and pro-workers television is, as an alternative to the existing mass media, broadcasting on Turksat 2A Satellite. In addition to Turkey, it can also be viewed all over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus.

Hayat TV is also a different alternative in terms of its organisational formation within the field of television broadcasting where monopolies dominate. Announced to the public with a declaration signed by hundreds of people, among whom were trade unionists, representatives of the mass organisations and many workers and labourers; Hayat TV aims to carry the ignored sections of the society to the screen with its participatory organisational model.

Hayat TV follows an increasingly enhanced broadcasting line with various documentaries, news programmes, street interviews as well as music and entertainment.

Hayat TV, setting out with the principle of “revealing the genuine colours of life”, claims to be a television channel through which life, truth, objective broadcasting and everything non-alien to people will be reflected. It is stated in the organisation manifesto of the channel that; “There are a lot of voices and images but when all of these come together, they do not constitute multi-vocality and they appear to be mono-vocal. We, the millions of workers and labourers, are obliged to watch whatever is presented on the television that we put in the key place of our homes. We are either alienated to ourselves, our problems and culture or identified with a different world which by no means resembles us. Let us be neither alienated nor identified with phenomena outside of ourselves. Let us be ourselves, protect our own existence.”

Hayat TV is a channel in which all sections whose existence has been ignored until now will not only find themselves but also call themselves into being. Hayat TV is the channel of the Kurds, the Laz people, the Arabs, the Circassians, the Armenians and the Surianis as well as of the workers, labourers and the impoverished masses.

Hayat TV had set up its cameras just in the midst of life and catch its visual richness in the rhythm of life flowing. Hayat TV calls itself into being as the channel of women whose lives have been caught between the kitchen and the bedroom, children targeted in advertisements as future “consumers”, the handicapped people, the environmentalists, the defenders of human rights and of course the art and artists.

Hayat TV is the voice of all sections struggling for a more liberated and more democratic world around the world. It conveys all lives and struggles from all corners of the world via broadcast to be viewed in the Middle East, the Caucasians and North Africa besides all Europe.

* “Hayat” means “Life” in Turkish

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