ABTTF participated in the conference “Media & Language Minorities”

ABTTF participated on 31 May 2011 in Brussels in the conference entitled “Media and Language Minorities”. Ali Türkelli, Member of the ABTTF International Affairs and Lobbying Group, represented the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace at the conference organized by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland (Svenska kulturfonden). It was underlined during the conference that for a cultural and linguistic minority, the mass media was an important tool for constructing its identity and for confirming its democratic rights. It was also discussed that the language usage in media shaped the way of language usage.

A number of experts, who came to Brussels upon invitation of the host organization, made presentations on minority languages and media during the conference, and shared their experiences of failure and success with the participants. Wivan Nygård-Fagerudd, Chair of the Council of the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, talked about “media panic” in her speech, and stated that trying to estimate the results of change without having enough information was generally dragging people to panic. Carl Haglund, MEP and Co-Chair of the Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages, said that for minorities, language and media were of prime importance as they nurtured culture and especially identities, and therefore, without minority media, it was not possible to introduce language and culture. With regard to examples from Europe, Kari Neilimo, Chair of the Board of the National Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), gave a presentation on the structure and broadcasting policy of the Finnish Public Television which was also broadcasting in the Swedish language. Tim Hartley, Director and Broadcaster of Welsh Language Programmes of S4C, talked about what they were doing in Wales to keep the Welsh language alive, and said that free minority media had increasingly gained more importance in a period, in which the state subsidies had diminished.

ABTTF brought the penalties imposed on the Minority newspapers Gündem and Millet and Minority radio station Kral FM to the agenda

During the conference, Ali Türkelli, Member of the Member of the ABTTF International Affairs and Lobbying Group, brought the excessive compensation fines imposed on the two important newspapers of the Turkish minority of Western Thrace in Greece, Gündem and Millet, and the penalty imposed on the Turkish minority radio station Kral FM on the grounds that the mentioned radio station did not broadcast in the original Greek language more than 25% of its transmission time. Türkelli stated that with regard to freedom of expression and press of minorities, there were serious problems in Greece, and asked the conference speakers how they saw in that context the future of Europe. The conference speakers uttered that unfortunately such problems existed in Greece, and Greece did not really have a positive record in that field. The representative of the European Commission also criticized Greece at the conference. He said that in the past in Greece, they had experienced suppression while carrying a out a study about minorities in Greece, and had to be taken in police protection.