site.btaNationalist Party Threatens to Protest if National Radio is Licensed to Launch Regional Station Broadcasting in Turkish

Nationalist Party Threatens to Protest if National Radio is Licensed to Launch Regional Station Broadcasting in Turkish

Sofia, August 20 (BTA) - Angel Dzhambazki, Deputy Chairman of
the VMRO Party and Member of the European Parliament (European
Conservatives and Reformists Group), stated his party's
readiness to stage a protest if the Bulgarian National Radio
(BNR) is licensed to start a Turkish-language programme service,
 VMRO said in a press release on Thursday.

Dzhambazki approached the Council of Electronic Media (CEM) with
 a formal request to get familiar with the full set of documents
 submitted by the BNR to the CEM applying for a broadcasting
licence for the new regional station.

The VMRO Deputy Chairman also wants to see the minutes and audio
 recordings of the two CEM meetings at which the matter of
licensing Radio Kurdzhali was discussed.

The press release says that VMRO has invariably stood up for the
 thesis that Bulgarian public-service media must conform to the
Constitution and broadcast their programme services in Bulgarian
 only.

BNR is planning to open its ninth regional radio station in
Kurdzhali (South Central Bulgaria). It is supposed to broadcast
at 90.9 MHz FM to the area of Kurdzhali and the villages in
Smolyan and Haskovo regions, where there is a compact Turkish
population. Initially, the programming will be six hours: three
hours in Turkish and three hours in Bulgarian. During the
remaining 18 hours, Radio Kurdzhali will relay the BNR Horizont
Programme. The broadcasts will total four hours over the
weekend. The Turkish component will be the same that BNR has
been creating and broadcasting from Sofia for ten years now
under a CEM licence dated October 31, 2005. It will consist of
news, a press review and folk music. The Bulgarian component
will be prepared in Kurdzhali and will cover subjects consistent
 with BNR's public function. Radio Kurdzhali will be formally
launched on January 1, 2016, but trial runs will start a month
earlier. The station will have a staff of 6-7 local journalists
and technicians.

On July 29, BNR Director General Radoslav Yankoulov and
Kurdzhali Mayor Hassan Azis signed an agreement under which the
municipality provides premises for the new station's studio and
editorial offices gratuitously for 10 years.  

The CEM met to consider BNR's application on August 18, but
adjourned the decision because a quorum was absent. At the
meeting, CEM member Maria Stoyanova objected to the proposal,
arguing that "180 minutes of Turkish speech and music on year
does not contribute to integration." Another CEM member, Ivo
Atanassov, also voiced concern with the volume of the programme
service.

Later on, Stoyanova said on Nova Television that the creation of
 a Turkish-language radio programme by the BNR is a
"provocation".

Dzhambazki, who attended the CEM meeting with a dozen of VMRO
supporters, described the BNR request as "scandalous" and
"inadmissible". "The proposed programme service of three hours
in a foreign language treated as equal to Bulgarian is not
integration at all, it is absolute disintegration," he insisted.