Kurdish Med-TV Jammed by Turkey
By Nick Grace
November 26, 1998
Med-TV, the four-year-old Kurdish-language satellite TV station based in Brussels and London is the target of systematic jamming by Turkey.
Lawyers for the service, which hits 70 countries, were quoted in Wednesday's Washington Post saying the jamming "is like taking a hammer to crack a nut" because it affects all other stations transmitting on the same frequency.
"They jam us, we avoid them, they track us and jam us again," managing director Hikmet Tabak said. "It's like Tom and Jerry in space...Med-TV, by just being a Kurdish channel, becomes a target." According to press reports, the station shifts around to other frequencies to avoid the jamming.
Although Med-TV considers itself a cultural and social station rather than a political outlet for Kurdish nationalism, they claim to have been jammed before by Turkey in 1997 and in early October 1998.
Med-TV's website can be accessed at: http://www.med-tv/be/.
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